from Hacker News

Digital advertising may be causing almost 2% of global carbon emissions

by happybuy on 2/12/24, 9:38 PM with 14 comments

• by samatman on 2/12/24, 11:42 PM

  This doesn't pass a cursory sniff test: Web traffic is 17% of Internet traffic, so even if we accept 25% of that is ads (I'm dubious) that would be 4.5% of traffic. That would add up to 0.3% of emissions.

  https://www.statista.com/statistics/271735/internet-traffic-...

• by rpastuszak on 2/12/24, 11:48 PM

  I was recently thinking about going back to the idea of Butter (https://butter.sonnet.io) and expanding it a little bit. Can we build a proof-of-concept of a universal ad blocker™ running on your phone? It uses AI (it's very fancy):

  - model 1: use screen capture to detect ads

  - model 2: once an ad is detected, hide it in a context specific way (e.g. if it's the native YT app, find and click the skip button, if it's a podcast, seek past the sponsored segment etc...)

  both model 1 and model 2 gradually learn, perhaps share knowledge between users, in a manner similar to blocklists.

  Perhaps in 3-5 years our devices (mobile G/CPUs and batteries) will get powerful enough to support this. Imagine the possibilities!

  It's a ridiculous idea. I also think it's possible we'll see something like this in the future, because it feels like a simpler solution than dealing with the systemic issues related to advertising.

• by nomel on 2/12/24, 11:32 PM

  I wonder how this compares to the manufacture of the things being advertised.

• by taeric on 2/12/24, 11:45 PM

  Wait until you see how much physical advertising contributes. :D

  Especially if you consider branding, which I don't know why it wouldn't be in this, it is tough to compete with shenanigans like how merchandising for the losing side of stuff like the super bowl are dealt with.