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Frame from Minority Report - Personal Advertising in the Future Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Minority Report - Personal Advertising in the Future

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Cited on HN 9 times, 2016–2026, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN uses it as the go-to reference whenever a story involves ad tracking, facial recognition or personalized billboards.

A one-minute clip from the film Minority Report showing digital signage that recognizes a passerby and personalizes ads to him by name. It depicts a vision of targeted advertising driven by biometric identification.

“here's the scene where all the digital signage knows who John Anderton is” (HN, 2017)

7 citations · 1 critical · 1 jokes · Other

9 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@newman314 Feb 2016 Cites it
on HN thread The Ad Blocking Wars
So... something like this? [this video] It's scary just how much Minority Report has predicted has come true. It's almost like the movie gave advertisers a playbook.
@tyingq Oct 2017 Cites it
on HN thread If all cars were autonomous
Minority Report does a decent job depicting several of these topics. Self driving cars[1], intrusive ads[2], and "no crime". [1] [link] [2] [this video] Not bad for a 2002 film adaptation of a 1956 short story.
@throwaway94856 Jun 2019 Pushes back
on HN thread I left the ad industry because of data tracking
I also work for an ad tech supplier. And yes, there is lots of incompetence and inefficiencies going around. But they sure are trying anyway. I recently saw the Minority Report targeted advertising scene[0] as an aspirational video in an internal document outlining business goals. [0] [this video]

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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