Almost two decades ago, I worked at a network service provider who had as a customer a company that provided the technology for serving those gas pump ads.

At each gas station they had a VSAT, a router and of course the digital signage boxes on each pump.

They fed the ads to thousands of pumps via a single T1 to HughesNet in Atlanta. They'd multicast the ads, and have a local cache at each pump that would receive the stream, cache it and serve it.

It was one of the most elegant setups I've ever seen, and should serve as a case study in multicast for efficient bandwidth utilization across an expensive data transmission medium.

One of the side buttons mutes it. It varies though as far as I know.

The local one doesn't play ads. They get my business for it. I live in a not so good place. I've had weapons pulled on me several times. The ads make me jumpy.

Am I the odd one out, because I find it incredibly easy to ignore ads.

Or… hear me out here … we could weaponize them. Most of them are operated by a company called GSTV who sell the ad slots. They could be purchased by activist groups to un-brainwash people who can’t mute them. They could read banned books out loud. Teach science. Explain what’s wrong with the electoral college.

GSTV also offers very precise targeting at specific zip codes or stations. So you could play an ad at your local station about whatever stupid thing your HOA is trying to do.

They're loud as hell too. Makes me want to put a shishkabob skewer through either my eardrum or the speaker. That my be an exaggeration, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that I actively the avoid gas stations in my city that have this "feature".

Small knife/chopstick etc through the plastic grate in front of the speaker does the job too

I haven't lived in the US in a while, and every time I visit and one of these things starts shouting at me, I wonder how anyone tolerates this shit.

Occasionally you'll see one button that's more worn, maybe bottom right iirc, that mutes it. Doesn't always work, though.

In my neck of the woods, gas station owners have sharpies which of the 10 buttons is the mute button.

So as soon as the ad plays you just press mute.

It is God awful though.

Good god... Worst I've seen so far here in Canada (granted I'm on an island stuck 20 years behind everyone else) was the pump screen flashing to show a loyalty program like AirMiles or PC Optimum or something and none of them have audio.

I'm boycotting Valero because of it. None of the gas stations around me seem to do it, it's just them. So fuck them.