Trailers are the kind of ad targeting that I don’t object to. Advertising movies to me right before I see a movie is:
* Relevant. You know I’m interested in movies, since I’m at one, so you don’t have to spy on me to do it. Some theaters might be spying on me, I dunno, but they don’t have to in principle.
* Not directly interfering with my original purpose. The movie hasn’t started yet. The only thing you might be showing me before the movie is, maybe, cartoon shorts? I guess that would be more fun than ads, but the ads aren’t going to give me malware or pretend to be from the FBI when they’re not, so it’s not as bad as internet ads.
* If the theater starts advertising scams, they have a brick-and-mortar address, they’re in the same legal jurisdiction as the visitors, and everyone sees the same ads, so suing them should be an option. Everybody who visited the movie saw the same set of ads, so if it’s a scam, there’s plenty of witnesses.
> If the theater starts advertising scams, they have a brick-and-mortar address, they’re in the same legal jurisdiction as the visitors, and everyone sees the same ads
That’s something else that drives me crazy with both YouTube & Twitter. The number of scams that run in their ads.
Some falsely referring to some local celebrity only to sell some dodgy pseudo-financial product. Others selling medical products that would be heavily regulated if they did anything close to what they promise, sometimes vaguely citing "medical research" and "new discoveries".
Almost as if they didn’t review them before letting them go live!
But we never hear a word about that, no.
Governments try to have all our online chats preemptively monitored to chase after pedophiles[1] (and then it’ll be terrorists, and heck, after that, why not copyright infringements while they’re at it? ie Hadopi)…
The news and our Dear Leaders keep ranting about Facebook, Google and Twitter because of how they are used to spread disinformation to further some political goals…
They also all keeps bashing Facebook & Google for supposedly causing the ruin of the news media (all of which then rants on about it whenever given a chance, mostly spouting nonsense, even those I like).
But big, supposedly (and probably wrongly) trusted platforms spreading scams at scale all over the world? That’s apparently not worth any widespread effort, fine or headline.
I keep seeing adverts for what's basically a bedsheet with £5 worth of copper wire in it sold at a ridiculous price as an "earthing mat". Not only is this shamelessly a scam, it also plugs into the mains so if they wire it badly (which as a shameless scam seems pretty likely) that's 240 V directly into your sleeping body. I've reported it as a scam so many times but nothing gets done.
If that bullshit worked you could just throw yourself in the sea for free rather than paying some pillock on Facebook. No better connection to earth than that!
But they are interrupting your original purpose! You bought a ticket for a movie starting at time X. At time X the theater is showing ads. This means at time X+length of movie you're still not done. Your schedule was delayed for the ads.
* Relevant. You know I’m interested in movies, since I’m at one, so you don’t have to spy on me to do it. Some theaters might be spying on me, I dunno, but they don’t have to in principle.
* Not directly interfering with my original purpose. The movie hasn’t started yet. The only thing you might be showing me before the movie is, maybe, cartoon shorts? I guess that would be more fun than ads, but the ads aren’t going to give me malware or pretend to be from the FBI when they’re not, so it’s not as bad as internet ads.
* If the theater starts advertising scams, they have a brick-and-mortar address, they’re in the same legal jurisdiction as the visitors, and everyone sees the same ads, so suing them should be an option. Everybody who visited the movie saw the same set of ads, so if it’s a scam, there’s plenty of witnesses.