These things are usually something extremely low powered like Raspberry Pis or Android tablets with a kiosk-mode app. That's like 20€ a year in power, but advertisement income can be far higher (the customers literally can't pee without watching the ads) - and as gas stations are barely profitable on gas and concession sales are falling everywhere because of rampant inflation, they look for every opportunity they can use to make some money.

The core problem is, as so often these days, that decades of unchecked capitalism have "optimized away" resilience on all levels: first, too much competition led to gas stations depending on concession sales (while oil companies make ever more insane profits), and now gas stations depend on nickeling-and-diming customers for shit that used to be free (by exposing them to ads wherever they can, some places have gated their vacuums and air pressers behind payment, and good luck finding a free loo). It's going to be a real shitshow when the ad companies shut down as the advertisers are cutting back on budget.

Better regulate gas stations otherwise they might end up buying into some failed cross promotional scheme putting ads in bathrooms. The horror.

Regulatory agencies should have stepped in as it became obvious that competition had led to unhealthy business practices. The thing is, a resilient (!) economy is a complex thing, and it absolutely requires outside feedback regulation.

A lack of competition aka mono/duo/oligopols controlling markets is obviously unhealthy, because too large and powerful entities can and will gouge customers in the best (=most harmless) case, or actually make absurd demands from politics in the worst case when they get way too large (see the recent Credit Suisse bank scandals).

The other way around, too much competition, is also bad, as it incentivizes unhealthy business behaviors such as wage theft, tax evasion, barely making profits (and thus, having no reserves for the event of an externally-caused economic shock), or exploiting customers to the point that they rather piss into a bush (and annoy residents) than pay 50ct for a loo.

And to make it worse, a part of the problem is that there are a ton of gas stations - in Germany, about 14.000 [1] - but only a handful of oil suppliers. And the suppliers have an insane amount of leverage here: the gas stations are effectively locked to them (e.g. virtually all oil in Eastern Germany originates from two refineries in Leuna and Schwedt), so the refineries can charge whatever they want, and gas stations don't have the freedom to add markup to make profits on gas.

[1] https://www.adac.de/verkehr/tanken-kraftstoff-antrieb/deutsc...

Android P

Treating your customers as ad-holes is ultimately pound foolish.

Speaking of pissing on your customers, I tried to create an FB account recently (thinking that the software I sell ought to have a FB presence). Immediately I received an email from FB accusing me of lying when setting up the account — requiring me to now submit my (mobile) phone number in order to begin the process of resolving the issue.

Yeah, no. Bye, FB.

FB has a large scam problem they are trying to get on top of. while I understand you not wanting to give them your number, I also understand their wish to verify you are a real person and not another automated scam.