 Martin Weißer, studied culture sciences and management, works with people with disablement and wants to work against advertisements. Dr. Eric Flick, works with FIFT, it's a forum for computer scientists and is terminally annoyed by neon advertisements. Your talk, your stage, enjoy. Hi. So, our talk will consist of five parts. First, I will describe the problems we see with advertisements. Then I will describe how in Hamburg there was a real escalation. I will talk about our initiative, the law we want to introduce and how you can take action yourself. So, first of all, not all advertisement is equally bad. We are talking about something like we can see here, it's in the way, it's intrusive. Sorry, there was sound missing. So, who doesn't know a city like Hamburg from everyday life, might not realize how annoying and distracting this can be. So, these instalments are really bright and they are moving and they are really distracting. They exist in analogue form as well as digital and are equally as annoying. So, the first time you see it, it might be interesting, but because it's stupid content and repeating so much, it changes you. I know that other people feel the same. Not all of them, some seem not to mind as much. But, yeah, the problems are real. The question why do I have to see this is obvious but never answered. And again, the sound is missing for me, I'm sorry. So, nobody is asking us. It's intrusive and we are forced to participate. It affects adults and also children. There is advertisements for tobacco, even in front of hospitals, because there is no alternative, apparently. If it's not working, you could just leave it out, don't do it. If it works, the question is, should it be there? So, some advertisement can be ignored easily, but there is the scientifically proven exposure effect that even something that weekly works still works on the long run. So, is it a good deal for the city? There's always somebody who says the city cannot ignore the money, but nothing is for free. So, what is being sold? The data? Probably not in this time, even though it would be possible with cameras and Bluetooth tracking in the advertisement installations. So, right now, what is being sold is right access to your thoughts. Over 15 years, it was 500 million dollars. So, this mindshare brings the citizens 20 bucks per year per person. So, is this really so much money that we cannot ignore it? We are paying for this with our attention. So, apparently, it was already always there, and we can't, we have to have it. And it pays for toilets, but there isn't that many toilets, I can't find it. So, what we need seems to be important, but it's being ignored, and we have that black and white. About the public-private partnership. It sounds convenient, but the government becomes the customer, and not a paying customer, but they become dependent. So, our attention is being marketed, is being sold. We don't have a say in it. And we are basically just the resources being mined. And the question, why do we have to accept this? The answers are not satisfying. Advertisement has always been there. We'll have it. But the publicity is not just really important, and there is no dialogue. What is about people who don't want to be consumers at the moment? And it's a very one-sided monologue. You have to know that it's not local advertisement. It's not really good for the local economy. It's just for monopolists, and those who want to become monopolist. It's not good for consumers, because good sources for information is independent and objective, and advertisement can't do that. It's unnecessary, and if we remove those installations, we don't lose anything. Quite the opposite. The only thing is workplaces. In theory, it's a valid argument. But if every business is being equal and is being protected, we cannot remove such a thing as cold energy either. It is distracting. It distracts you when you partake in traffic. And that's on purpose, because it's placed where it will catch your attention. There is a lot of light emissions, and that's a problem. And a lot of screens are even placed in shops and windows. That changes the day and night rhythm of humans and animals. And even switching it off after midnight doesn't help much. Even after a year, we don't really have much data about this. In the beginning, this apparently didn't matter much. Even about traffic didn't really concern many people. But we will keep asking. There are 4.000 of these installations in Hamburg. Between 2020 and 2020, around 4.000 of these installations, including background illumination and changing content, were installed. Werbung gab es schon immer. Es ist in den letzten beiden Dekaden. Es ist in den letzten decade so escalatet. In den early 2000s. Es tauchten die ersten Wunschhäuser und erleuchten die Heerkästen auf. At busstations. 2007. Dreuer put out another offer. And holds now a large monopole. Almost never anything got built back. In the year 2000, these adverts didn't exist. So you can see it's not that needed. So do you need these 4.000? Is it a lot or not? So let's see this. Like, you can see here where these things show up. Every blue dot is an external advertising tool. And most of them are backlit. Some of them are just posters. But like, these are also kind of big. And if it's on a house wall, it's even bigger. A lot of them are at crossings. So at the most important roads, you just see advertising all the time. This is open data. This is from a repo of Jupiter Notebooks. You can look at this data yourself. We also looked at how much advertisement you are pressured to consume. You think that it's less outside. Disappointed. Not at how much you have to see if you drive through the city. Can't really escape. So you pass like 50 of these things if you drive from the inside to the outside of the city. Das sind durchaus normale Wege, die viele Menschen jeden Tag auf sich nehmen müssen. Real normal ways that a lot of people need to take. Even a bit crazier with bicycles. Probably because the fast roads are rear of adverts for a good reason. So, if you use public transport, you are not better off. So, fine Senator Hamburg said, we won't have that much adverts in the next few years. Very wrong. And you can see that in any city that will drive to these offers. So, I'm giving over to Martin. Martin. Statttif Hamburg ad three came from a wanting to remove external advertisement. We are a small group of democracy, climate, safety stuff. And we hate Adverts outdoors. And I think it's a bigger problem out of the commercialization All the places of life by large corporations, and afflicting a lot of areas of cities, city planning. We talked about how we could have a large impact, started using the initiative Hamburg to get free as a tool of direct democracy. I'll tell you more about that. Here's some international examples. Power, organizations can do something against advertisement. Paolo in 2007, by the mayor, a law, banned adverts from, large adverts from the city. And you can see here, before, after this internet, you can find images of high rises with extremely sexist adverts on it. And most people were very happy about the changes. Grenoble, was similar, initiative by the local government, by the mayor, and adverts in the public space were removed. This is really big, you can see stuff like this in Hamburg as well. It's a mega light, this stuff below the city light, on the right, both have vanished, and there's a tree now. In Geneva, maybe you heard about it, this is a new development, which started in 2017. There was a mistake in the contracts, where multiple hundred adverts places weren't filled for a few months. So people put on art and slogans stuff, people loved that. And they thought, why do corporations like Coca Cola or whatever get these places, because like adverts are not a natural law or something, but they did a new contract. The places were stuffed with commercial adverts again. So the initiative got together and the sign-up campaign, after that for like three years, they now make us looked if that initiative was legal. And in this year, in September, the sort of law in the Switzerland said that yes, this initiative is legal. In the parliament of Geneva had to take on the initiative, and there won't be more cities are not at free at all. Nowadays Sao Paulo and Grenoble still have public-private partnerships at the bus stations. In Geneva, this will only be legal in a few years and won't be only be true for places in public spaces. So people to see the adverts doesn't really matter if it's public or private property, but legally there's a large difference. I'll talk about the ad-free city network now. This is in the UK, they publish readers on topics like what's wrong with advertisement, like mental health, sexism, local, economy. Local groups, they use petitions, art, actions, lobbying to reduce advertisement. And just banning some product groups like fossil fuels or SUVs, stuff like that. In France, since 1992, there's a group named fighting against malicious advertisement. Not only because for advertisement for stations, TVs, advertisement, there are 15 groups with a lot of options against digital outdoor adverts. And to compile just a little information of what we already said to summarize, there is resistance against the commercialization of the public realm. It's both top-down and bottom-up, but it's complicated. There's not just one law that has to be changed and everything will be good. We have to distinguish, is it public space or is it private space? And of course there is this unfathomable public-private partnerships. So, yeah, let's talk about Berlin ad-free now. It started in July 2018. Well, it collected signatures. And it was more than 42,000. So the Senate took one and a half years to check the laws and decided, nope. We have to keep those laws. Even though the Constitutional Court of Berlin decided otherwise, so now they have to, they now can keep working. And they are collecting signatures again. So this slide shows the situation of Berlin ad-free and Hamburg ad-free and the concept how to also bring in other cities. So we are depending on the political situation in the following years. In Hamburg, we will start next years with collecting signatures. We don't need that many. If you want to join, please sign. And then we have six months. And we need 10,000 signatures. I would say we will manage. We are also prepared for the Senate to ignore our proposition. And we probably have to go to the Constitutional Court. And then there will be a public poll. And everything goes well. For the next EU election, we will have law prepared. And we will have prepared everything for referendum. And you will be able to say yes to it in the election. So you can feel free to contact us. So people from Berlin, Hamburg and other cities already created this association. For the ad-free to make public spaces ad-free. So our proposition for the law is now about seven pages. And we want to change the building laws as well. So on the left you would see what is a permanent ad. And we have to distinguish between permanent ads. And on the right side we have a bus with an advertisement. That would not be a permanent ad. So if you sit on the inside, you can't look out. But changing the building laws, we wouldn't affect the bus, obviously. But we try to bring everything together in one initiative. So ad-Installations on public ground and visible from public ground should be reduced in five aspects. So where it stands at temporary installations, then public transport into others. So the first one, where it stands. Having shop windows and signs of a company is allowed. But having it higher than ground level is not allowed. Or bigger than just one floor level. And where it stands at temporary, then public stops. The format is maximal A0, and smaller. But it should not be illuminated from behind. Es könnte illuminiert sein, aber nicht von hinten, so dass es nicht alles mit der Illumination ist. Also klassische Advertisement-Pillen sind noch laut, aber nur die, die nicht illuminiert sind. Also sind sie oft in der Art und Weise. Einige Plätze auf dem öffentlichen Land. Maximum, sie sollten vier Meter vor dem Land sein. Maximum von Dean A4, nicht illuminiert. Und jetzt ein kleiner Quiz. So, das ist eine klassische Advertisement-Pillen. Es würde auf dem öffentlichen Land sein, also ist es okay, aber die Plätze sind zu groß, so dass sie nicht erlaubt werden. Also, das ist eine Advertisement-Pillen. Es ist zu hoch, über den Boden. Es ist größer als 10 m2, und die Plätze sind viel größer als A4. So, das habe ich schon gezeigt, es ist nicht erlaubt, dass die Plätze nicht erlaubt werden. Es ist eine öffentliche Informationsinstallation, und es ist wirklich in der Art und Weise. Sie sind in digitalen Formen, oder nur ein Posterwindow. Aber ich würde nicht sagen, es ist nicht erlaubt. Es ist nicht erlaubt, es sorry, es ist wirklich in der Art. und es ist Und ich bin wirklich erstaunlich, wie viel Advertisement in der Trains ist. Du kannst nicht dort sitzen und ein Buch riechen, ohne etwas zu sehen, etwas zu sehen, ohne dich zu sehen und dich zu beachten. Und ich denke, es ist auch dystopisch. Und nur zu diesem, da sind Advertisementen, die zu News sind. Also, wer wählt, welchen News er hat, ich denke, das ist problematisch. Also, dieses Beispiel, es ist eine Ad-Installation. Du kannst es nicht sehen, es ist neben den Trains. Also, es ist ein Privatgrund, es ist ein wenig unter 10 m2, es ist nicht zu lässig, ist die Plakatierung. Also, das könnte okay sein, aber der Poster ist größer als A0. So wie das, es wäre okay. Also, viele kleine Poster, statt einer großen, wäre okay. So, auch mit unserer Law, es wäre noch mehr, aber es wäre nicht so intrusiv. Also, second to last slide. A lot of these initiatives are successful. This is from the Wikipedia page of the initiatives in Hamburg. 72% were successful to collect the 10,000 signatures in the first level. Many of them or some of them were accepted by Senate. Some managed the second stage of collection of signatures and even the referendum. So, for example, the one for the rebuying of the power lines, that was a referendum as well. Then sometimes there's compromises between the Senate initiatives like the one for the improvement of bike traffic. Some of the demands were met, others not. So, if there might be a compromise with us, that would have to include that there is no more outdoor advertisement in digital form. That's like our main point. So, the last slide. We will begin collecting signatures in March. And if you are interested in the topic, please contact us. We are on Facebook, Instagram. No, not Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, but please follow us on Macedon or write an e-mail. We are happy about all the help. So, yeah, please spread the word. You can help by distributing the message and help make this initiative known to people. I'm done, thank you. Please imagine ravaging applause here. Thank you very, very much for this great talk. Especially the data that you collected. So, it's really difficult how much advertisements there are on the streets. Also, comparing. Please sit down. So, comparing, so, comparing, so, comparing, so, comparing cities between each other was very, very interesting. Thanks also from the audience. We have a lot of questions. So, do you need more people helping you? Yeah, definitely. Also, we definitely need further people. So, people are really engaged, but it costs a lot of energy. Also, helping, talking to people. This is, needs a lot of time and we'll use all the support we can get. I hope your servers can be okay with a coming storm. Activists are always welcome. Another question, do you need financial help? Do you have help from the politicians? Well, the Bewegungsschiftung supports us, thanks for that. Politics is a question of the left in Hamburg which is pretty focused on the topic right now. The governing parties don't really maybe someone will be interested. The second question do you need financial help? That's not really the big problem right now. Thanks for the honest answers. Thank you. Thanks to the Signal Angels. One question. Are there statistics on how many precious accidents happen through these distractions by adverts? That's a very good question which we would like to answer but asking this in Hamburg which question the government. There are studies from Tel Aviv where the city speedway had no adverts for a short time so you could actually show that there are more studies that don't show that but it would be interesting to know in Hamburg as well. I think the emperor is naked pretty obvious things standing in the way is there so people look at them so our parliamentary request was written like it just the senate think that the risk is like zero and this risk gets ignored in advert land and autoland germany on the english side of ad-free cities UK there are some studies but we would like to have our own study with our cooperation public spaces if our scientists want to join and do some studies now I am no lawmaker but if this happens und yeah so studies where it is shown that adverts are distracting so if you are not allowed to look at your smartphone while driving so I can imagine there is a measurable effect so someone is working on a psychology degree this is an interesting essay or study you could do so that would be interesting thanks now with this initiative you might have some enemies so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so