Adblockers: The Only Way Out

Where are you getting this "you claim to offer your content for free" from? Most sites don't make a claim the content is free, but people like to assume it is and take it. It doesn't put the providers in a good light that it's become the norm that there's an unspoken agreement going on that they are benefiting from, but it's not any better on the consumer side, as taking something without confirming it's actually free isn't appropriate either.

What we have here is an unspoken agreement about a transaction taking place, and both sides are interpreting it in their best interests without confirming that's okay for the other side. Everyone's an asshole in this scenario, which I think fairly accurately describes reality.

To put this in relatable terms, it's like walking down a country road and coming upon a crate of apples. While they don't say they are free, they look kind of free, and you're hungry. You take one, and all of a sudden a guy jumps out from behind a tree and demands that you owe him a favor and some info about yourself for eating his apples. He's a scumbag, it's obvious, for trying to engineer a scenario where he can solicit business from people that might otherwise pass him by, but the passerby that partakes without confirming that it's actually free isn't without fault either.

Now, we see that some people are pretty good at just ignoring the shop keeper, and they keep reaping the benefits of free apples. Sure, the owner of the apples is an asshole, but the other people are still stealing his apples, and regardless of how much an asshole he is, that's not okay. At this point, both parties are acting in bad faith. Unfortunately, the problem is muddied by the facts that people decided long ago, primarily due to these shady guys and small favors, that apples just aren't worth paying money for anymore, and rarely the guys that own the apples even sell your info and/or favors to really shady people, so it's often safer to ignore them and give them nothing.

P.S. Yes, this conflates the content creator and the ad network, but that's not really the point of this.

> This, I think, is where you and I disagree: the web was founded on the free exchange of information, where when you put something online, it's free

That is definitely where we disagree. The web is a medium. Ascribing freedom to it is a fallacy, regardless of how it was first developed and used. It would not be where it is today without commercial interest at every level, and to me it's obvious that when a business is on the web, their purpose is not to give you free stuff, it's to make money[1]. I think to assume otherwise it to delude oneself. In other words, the internet doesn't have an opinion on whether it should be used for free things or not.

> And the other thing is I have never seen a site that asks me not to use it if I block ads, a request I fully respect.

Depending on how you interpret the message, I have. I've seen messages where the ads would be saying "We support this site with advertising, without thatrevenue we can't continue. Please don't block our ads." You can choose to either interpret that as them whining, or you can choose to interpret it as them expressing their wishes that ads be viewed on the site, and to use it with an ad blocker is against their wishes.

1: For that matter, nothing is free, ever. There is always an intended purpose, and an intended gain for the exchange. That gain may not be directly from the other party, and may not be financially based. For example, the gain could be the opinion of the other party or society in general (social capital, fame), a long play on later financial gain (establishing relationships), or the feeling of doing something useful for society or specific others (personal esteem), etc. If you can't determine why something is being offered, then you should be wary.