As Phụ Nữ reports, Vietnam recently announced Decree No. 342, which details a number of provisions to the national Advertising Law, due to take effect from February 15, 2026. The adjustments are expected to place stricter control on Vietnam’s online advertising activities to protect consumers and curb illegal ads.
Amongst the decree articles, some standout stipulations include a hard cap on the waiting time before viewers can skip video and animated ads to no more than 5 seconds. Static ads must be immediately cancellable.
Nice but all I want is actually liability. Meta should be hold liable for each and every single scam ad and here in south-east asia it’s just rampant.
I see nothing but blatant scams, especially on Meta platforms. I don’t mean simple e-commerce scams either where you buy some trash and it never gets sent to you - it’s full on phishing and finance scams.
I just dont understand how are we collectively ok with this - every platform should have the burden of full liability, period. If someone gets their money taken through scam ad not only Meta should pay them back but suffer a 100x fine as well. The unskippable ad is nothing compared to this.
Same with google in East Europe. Constantly seeing AI generated politicians pushing for scams. Several times I’ve reported the more obvious scams with proof. Google has always responded to me that it does not break their terms of service. So if you want to advertise scams - know that google allows it.
Please stop using those Meta platforms and stick sites like Bluesky or Lemmy.
100% and I’m an early adopter of all decentralized platforms but I still run IT of my all extended family and have a few connections through these platforms so even with my limited use I’m still exposed to so many scams. I can’t imagine what a daily normal user sees, it must be just scam after scam.
I’d love that, but I need Whatsapp to participate in society. Several companies, mostly SMEs in fact but also big ones won’t talk to me if not through Whatsapp.
At least 10% of their entire ad revenue comes from ads related to Scams or illegal things.
I mean you seem to keep using those meta platforms. Sounds like you are okay with the scam ads then.
They didn’t say stop participating in society they said stop using Metas plaforms which is actually a really easy thing to do.
Unless you think Facebook/IG are society.
No, but some public transit services, random service providers, random SMEs whose services I use communicate solely through Whatsapp.
this is woke liberal communism, won’t somebody think of the shareholders?
(/j)
Vietnam’s 2nd win against US
Mobile game ads that make you close it three times before they let you continue playing can fuck off as well. Trying to trick me into clicking on your ad only makes me hate your product more, idiots.
The moment I see this I delete the game/app and leave a 1 star review. Reap what you sow.
I encountered a crazier one recently: the app will just refuse to start if you block the ad servers they’re using, showing “connection unstable”.
Went to connection history and saw lots of requests to ad servers, unblocked them and I finally started the app without error, but yeah I did see ads too.
I deleted the app afterwards.
These ‘games’ realty are just a vehicle for delivering ads, aren’t they, but I guess that’s been true of all sorts of things for decades.
https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls#mobile-os
blocks all ads device-wide for free. the “base” profile should be good enough for most people. note: while this is provided by Mullvad, a trusted VPN company, the solution above is NOT a VPN.
I’ve been using Adguard DNS. Is this better?
personally, I’m wary of totally-not-Russian companies operating from Cyprus.
I know about this. I’m someone who lives next to Russia in Baltics, and our blood is boiling with hatred towards them. But here’s the thing - a lot of companies and artist’s whom I love ran away/relocated once it was clear what direction Russia is going in. I have nothing against those who left.
Ukrainians are working for AdGuard afaik.
They just keep getting worse. Many of them now take you to the app store instead of closing the ad. Once you’ve gone to the app store and then back to the game, it’ll show the button to close it.
I’ve been noticing that as well. Fucking bullshit. I just want to play a nice serene game of Mahjong or Freecell. Fuck off, Temu. I don’t want to ‘shop like a billionaire’. I don’t want to shop at all while I’m shitting.
Anyone know of a version of either that’s ad free for Android?
I actually paid the 6 bucks or so for the paid version of Chuzzle 2 to get rid of the ads, and they’ve never asked me for another cent in the several years since. Totally worth it.
Here’s a great free cell solitare app, called pysolfc
Mahjong Soul is free and has no ads
I had a look and yeah, I can do without the anime bullshit. I just want a simple mahjong solitaire. The Mobilityware one I’ve been playing is nice, but the ads have gotten to me, and when I looked to remove them it was a monthly subscription, and fuck that.
There is Tenhou, which is more basic, but it feels too serious, and I think it’s only in japanese.
Kemono Mahjong has less anime, and a really good UI for phones and only costs 5USD 1 time, but you can only play against computers or friends, no random match making.
This is good and would be better than trying to fight adblockers all the time.
Good job, a small step the right direction.
YouTube: okay, after 5 seconds you can skip to the next ad.
Oh look, a government that seems to be at least a little interested in things that benefit their people.
My fellow americans and I look at this concept and tilt our heads to the side like confused puppies.
but atleast you have 2 parties to choose from? why does it matter that fundamentally nothing will change tho? enjoy freedom!!
If possible in Vietnam, then we can all have this wherever we are in the world. Europe set out USB-C compliance and everyone is compliant.
Theres a major difference though. It is much more costly and complicated to manufacture different hardware for different countries (especially with the eco system of peripherals behind it) than it is to change software for different countries.
Its easy for YouTube or Facebook to set all ads for Vietnam to skippable while maintaining unskippable ads for other countries to maximize profits.
I think you’ve just made my point. If they can all move to USB-C then a few switches at the back end would be far simpler. We just need the gumption to speak out and tell these so-called IT companies what is and isn’t acceptable.
I don’t think you understood what I was trying to say:
The difference is that companys wont do the skippable ads by themselves. Each country will have to do their own legislation to mandate this. Even if Europe would do similiar legislation to Vietnam, YouTube would still show full ads in other countries because they make them way more money.
Which is quite the difference to hardware mandates like USB-C, where a few countries can basically set it as mandatory and the manufacturers will roll it out for all countries because its easier and cheaper to manufacture one model than multiple different versions.
It makes no sense for Apple to produce one iPhone with USB-C and one with lightning financially. But it makes a lot of sense for YouTube to show unskippable ads in every country that allows it to make more money.
I think you’re misunderstanding. I think what the person above is saying is that if Youtube can go back to skippable ads and not pull out of Vietnam or go bankrupt (lol), then places like the EU or even individual EU countries have more than enough leverage to demand this.
Yes, thank you, this is my point.
VPN 🤔
they will simply use this as justification to block YouTube from the country.
it’s an extremely popular site in Vietnam, but they’ve been trying to block it as well as Facebook for years. they’ve also blocked steam, the BBC, paste bin, medium… The Vietnamese government does not care about Internet technology I promise.
Social media is supposedly a threat to that government, but at the same time, however, they allow some fly-by-night outfits to run fake CSR operations covering up spam jobs and scams on social media.
The anti-government sentiment is very strong in the country right now because of all these new decrees that they’re making, some of which are batshit crazy, and the speech is happening largely on YouTube
Someone got tired of the damn ads interrupting their karoake sessions.
W for Vietnam.
We obviously didn’t bomb them enough, they sure are uppity
LAUNCH THE SEVENTH FLEET, GET THE COMMIES
So you get 100 5s ads instead of 5 100s ads. What’s the point? Just get ublock origin and stop using apps.
i mean i see what you’re saying but i wouldn’t think that vietnam is going to give up that easily after going one step in the right way and i think if they can limit long ads they may be able limit short ones later (and yes i have something that has an 80/100 chance to automatically block ads)
It’s setting expectations. Just because I can wear a clip on my nose, I won’t stop telling the local idiot to stop farting loudly in the elevator.
Careful what you wish for. The silent ones can be worse.
But didn’t we say we could win against 100 duck sized horses. So 5 horse sized ducks and I don’t think we have a chance
Curious how big-tech platforms, actively moderating every user action on their platform (for advertiser-friendliness), while often involved with codeveloping the world’s leading AI models, are somehow unable to moderate advertisement content. Certainly no conflict of interest there…
I do wonder what downstream consequences this might entail: if YouTube starts baking advertisements right into videos, would they still classify as advertisements? And what would this in turn mean for content-creators’ sponsored content (often constituting a significant portion of their income)?
As much as I passionately hate advertisements (leading me to mercilessly block every single one of them), I rather have platforms using advertisements for monetization, than doubling down on selling user-data.
They should add another decree banning bot farms and scamlots and Elsagate content.
I crush the fucking block button whenever I see those fake apology ads from that country telling me to buy a cheap fake Marshall Bluetooth speaker that doesn’t exist thru a phishing site wanting credit card information.
