this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026

264 points (96.8% liked)

Privacy

5631 readers

351 users here now

Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.

Rules

PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!

Be civil and no prejudice
Don't promote big-tech software
No apathy and defeatism for privacy (i.e. "They already have my data, why bother?")
No reposting of news that was already posted
No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)

Related communities:

Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

otter@lemmy.ca

shaytan@lemmy.dbzer0.com

264

The Mullvad ad that was banned in the UK (media.mullvad.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by artyom@piefed.social to c/privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

https://mullvad.net/en/and-then/uk

all 40 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 41 points 2 months ago (3 children)

tooo large! Resized to 360p:

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

360p is too much. Do thecodec for the Nintendo 3DS, that goes on a 224p screen.

[–] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 4 points 2 months ago

donate here, so I can afford a dedicated FFMPEG server.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago

Thanks, I'm not a web wizard and didn't want to upload it on piefed servers.

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world -4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

A video file can never be too large. The more bits dedicated to image quality, the better.

[–] Havatra@lemmy.zip 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

When there's no particular need of high definition (nothing here that is small or hard to see, nor particularly pleasing aesthetics), the gains from a big file falls away. And the upsides of a smaller video is that people with poor internet speeds can stream it more easily, and it takes less space on the servers (which are not free to run here on the fediverse).

Worth a smaller file size imho

[–] Nikelui@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Absolutely.
Unpopular opinion maybe, but any resolution larger than 720p is wasted on a laptop monitor and any resolution larger than 1080p is wasted on anything that is not a movie theater.

[–] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Let us know how the MOV runs on your Amiga⸮🙄

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Don't be ridiculous. MOV is an inefficient, out of date format.

[–] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 1 points 2 months ago

… why are you telling me for‽ mullvad published in that container format. I encode VP8+OPUS ?h×640w.
R U 👌?

[–] Canuck@sh.itjust.works 26 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Skit based off of Dude, Where's My Car? https://youtu.be/oqwzuiSy9y0

[–] artyom@piefed.social 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Correct

[–] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Canuck forgot to use quotation marks, or italic.😁
bonus for year in parentheses.

[–] andicraft@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

nice try, you can’t trick me into watching an ad

[–] artyom@piefed.social 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Blast, foiled again!

[–] heathenstorm@news.heathenlab.net 9 points 2 months ago

Had no idea Jonas Åkerlund directed it. There's some solid credentials there.

[–] D06M4@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Good stuff! I'd watch TV again if this was available there. I will say Ring's Superbowl ad probably landed the point in a way average people would better understand it, albeit unintentionally.

[–] renrenPDX@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 months ago

And then?

[+] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 months ago (4 children)

[deleted]

[–] chimp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't get why you think its awful. How would a normie evaluate this in your opinion?

[–] XLE@piefed.social 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"Monitoring pedophiles in my area is probably a good thing. Wait, monitoring myself? Isn't that my choice? Wait, now protestors? That's bad, usually... Wait, graffiti artists? Well some of... Wait, women?"

[–] chimp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But that's the point of the ad, to convey that surveillance of a specific group of people will sooner or later be exploited to monitor anyone, no matter their involvement. Therefore you should invest in a VPN.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 5 points 2 months ago

But the question is, are you translating it that way because you know what they were trying to convey, or because they actually conveyed it that way? Because the average person is going to just see good thing, bad thing, good thing, bad thing.

And would you expect the average person to parse it correctly within the time it aired?

[–] ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you think "Someone supremely high on the smell of their own farts made this," then you are part of the problem with the world today and the reason why they're able to get away with mass surveillance. This message is incredibly important, and you're writing it off as pretentious. Fucking bootlickers.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Glad I'm not the only one who thought so. I agree with the ad exclusively because I can project my own opinions about surveillance being bad onto it, but some of it makes no sense.

What do the people represent? (Anybody? Hackers? A nation-state?)
Why do they want to monitor AI?
Why do they want to monitor themselves? Is monitoring yourself as bad as monitoring protesters or women?
How is the average viewer supposed to react to the beginning, that these people want to monitor murderers, and pedophiles first?

And if you're able to come up with answers to all these questions, were you able to come up with all those answers in the time you were allotted to think about each mentioned group before the ad snapped to a new one?

[–] kip@piefed.zip 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

this is more nitpicky than your points (which i agree with) and i know that as they've made an advert in english they'll want to reuse it in all english speaking regions, but i'm not sure how a car full of americans talking about cilantro and president nixon is likely to endear them to UK customers

[–] XLE@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Maybe the best thing that happened to this advertising is the fact it got banned. The ad might be incomprehensible, but it's not offensive. I'm drinking my glass of cilantro juice to the hope it got people talking.

[–] kip@piefed.zip 2 points 2 months ago

probably so. there may be a contingent of users who will be suspicious of flamboyant advertising for such a service (see nordvpn) but they're not the target here so mullvad will probably get their money's worth regardless. personally i'm paid up till september through mozilla so will consider what to do.

mine's a coriander, cheers

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social -2 points 2 months ago

Yeah, it's terrible. Made with AI is my guess too? Mullvad are good at VPN services but not so much video marketing.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Can't relate, I use Pakistan International Airlines where port forwarding is a guaranteed service

[–] just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago

The joke here is private internet access (PIA) vpn. In case anyone else got confused like me

[–] FactualPerson@lemmy.world -2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Probably banned due to the language and not the actual context or the product, which is lost IMO.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It says why in the blog post

[–] ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What language?

[–] FactualPerson@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's obvious right? I can't think of any ads that use this kind of language together. Whilst not cuss words it's going to be classed as sensitive.

[–] ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Why don't you just fucking say what you find offensive and stop beating around the bush? Is it pedophile? Because that's not "sensitive language." Jesus fucking christ, stop perpetuating the thought control.

[–] FactualPerson@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I didn't say I was offended.

[–] ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

Then why can't you just say what the fuck you're talking about?