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AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

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Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#151
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding #3, I'm personally 100% against any online advertising in any form. So this punishes those who support it. Ditto for #2. As for #1, I'm not gaining anything, and no one is being deprived for their rights. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make there? If anything prosecutors should start with the rampant fraud being committed by companies in the online advertising space before they even think about lo…

Micropayments have never worked well on the internet, not for technical problems, but likely more that the market isn't really there. I know I just want free stuff and I'm not going to pay to read a news article or blog post no matter how well written or researched. So at the end of the day there is still no viable alternative to advertising supported content. Kill advertising and you'll take the content with it, bec…

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen wrote a solid proposal for micropayments back in 2001. I don't think anyone has ever seriously tried to implement his idea, so until someone does try we won't know if it could work well.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/user-payments-predictions-f...

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#152
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>3. I dislike activism without clear objectives. I see no list of guidelines here or good behavior that companies could adopt to immediately place them on the side of the good guys. The goal highly specific. It is to make Internet advertising artificially expensive, and it is to make harvested data about users inaccurate. There are no "good guys" on the other side. People shouldn't track me, that one's obvious, but t…

It's not like the ads just appear while you're sitting around doing nothing. You see the ads when you are receiving something with them. The ad companies are paying for your attention with the content you consume.

If I pass a street musician, I haven't implicitly signed a contract to pay her for the show -- either in currency or by transferring any other valued commodity. I don't have an obligation to support her business plan, even if I enjoy the music.

She may perhaps claim that we entered into an implied contract. Or the musician could post a placard reading her terms-of-service. But in simply walking down the street, like clicking on a link, it can't reasonably be claimed that I entered into a preconceived and negotiated contract where I agreed to payment for a service.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#153
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You set the price when you consume the content that you know is funded with ads. You're objectively wrong. If that were the case, I would be blocked from accessing the content without "paying the price". The situation is instead clearly analogous to a "pay what you feel it is worth" model. The creators of the content allow anyone to view it, regardless of whether they run an ad blocker or not. Sometimes, they place…

Content creators have gone with not blocking blockers up until now because it's not an issue. As it becomes more of an issue you start seeing more and more anti-blocking scripts. Once or twice in all your years online you have agreed to an alternate funding method and you think that is sustainable for content creators? You can make a lot of arguments for ad blocking. I ad block because it slows my computer down. Maki…

You can think it's a joke, but I agree with parent completely. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter, since I get to choose what runs on my hardware, and I choose not to see ads.

Whether something is sustainable for content creators is not the users' concern, you don't go around worrying whether Walmart can make profit, why do you worry whether a random internet blogger can?

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe mini-payments would be better than micro-payments, so long as there's a good it-just-works technology for doing them that minimizes user interaction. Did you like this comment? Leave a tip: 50c - $1 - $5

The history of the web is littered with the corpses of tipping companies because almost no one wants to tip on the web. Same for micropayments. No one wants to think about if they should pay for an article even if it is only 1c.

maybey you could have a default .01$ for all sites that are using the micropayment platform (somthing like a discus plugin), and then the option to give more if you really like. so you don't actaully need to think about it most of the time

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#155
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like the ads just appear while you're sitting around doing nothing. You see the ads when you are receiving something with them. The ad companies are paying for your attention with the content you consume.

If I pass a street musician, I haven't implicitly signed a contract to pay her for the show -- either in currency or by transferring any other valued commodity. I don't have an obligation to support her business plan, even if I enjoy the music. She may perhaps claim that we entered into an implied contract. Or the musician could post a placard reading her terms-of-service. But in simply walking down the street, like…

Correct you took no action to interface with them besides walking. But if you walk into a room where just a musician is playing(and its advertised that this is whats happening in the room) you have now created a relationship where you've chosen to receive their art. And if they have a poster for their sponsor on the wall behind them you can't complain about it.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#156
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The foundation of the Web - the Hypertext Transfer Protocol - is that I request a piece of data from a given address, while also providing relevant information about my capabilities and media I'm willing to accept, and then you send me back that data. So Facebook says that the foundation of the web is sending data to the server (such as cookies) and receiving information back. Nowhere in the protocol does it say the…

> Ergo, tracking is perfectly legal and moral. It is currently legal, but that doesn't imply that it's moral. Legality does not define morality. > Nowhere in the HTTP protocol does it say not to send viruses. Correct. > Totally ethical and legal. Sending a virus is patently unethical regardless of the transport mechanism. as for legality, see a lawyer about 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/t…

I was just responding to OP's claim that since the protocol doesn't specify that I'll be watching ads, it must be legal and ethical to block them and harass those who spend money on them.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your time is so important why are you wasting it visiting pages with ads? Because I get linked to them. Also, social objects - other people are visiting those pages, so I have to check them out too in order to participate in the conversation. Also, YouTube. > Surely you'd just stick with the better content that doesn't use ads all the time right? Yeah, and I mostly do.

>social objects - other people are visiting those pages, so I have to check them out too in order to participate in the conversation. So maybe that's the cost of not seeing ads, you don't get to participate in conversations. It's like if Stallman would, instead of making GNU, hack into MS and put the source online because he "just has to". Most of the time, taking a moral stand requires sacrifice.

You seem to imply there is something questionable about blocking ads. The cost of not seeing ads is the time I spend setting up and configuring the ad-blocker. It's a lower cost than the attention spent on ads, so I block them.

Your analogy doesn't work, because this is about ownership. I own my machine, so I get to decide what will run and how.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your time is so important why are you wasting it visiting pages with ads? Because I get linked to them. Also, social objects - other people are visiting those pages, so I have to check them out too in order to participate in the conversation. Also, YouTube. > Surely you'd just stick with the better content that doesn't use ads all the time right? Yeah, and I mostly do.

So you just follow random links people send you? That seems like a horrible waste of your most precious commodity. YouTube offers a way to pay for an ad free experience. Are you a paying member?

Why would I pay YouTube for an ad free experience, when I already have an ad free experience?

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history of the web is littered with the corpses of tipping companies because almost no one wants to tip on the web. Same for micropayments. No one wants to think about if they should pay for an article even if it is only 1c.

maybey you could have a default .01$ for all sites that are using the micropayment platform (somthing like a discus plugin), and then the option to give more if you really like. so you don't actaully need to think about it most of the time

I still have to decide if I want to pay $0.01 just to visit a page. For every page I want to open I have to go through the mental process of "Is this page worth $0.01?". And it is that cost which is why micropayments like that always fail.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean it's not vandalism, too. The fact that no property is actually destroyed does mean that, but I think there is a qualitative difference between blocking ads and attempting to swamp ad-pricing signals with injected noise.

It's my bandwidth, my browser. I'll automate clicking any goddamn thing I like. Don't like it? Don't serve it.

Ugh, we've had this argument so many times.. By your logic, the website operator can also say "it's my website, I'll serve the ads I want the way I want.. don't like it? don't visit my site"

And yet, there you are anyways, with your ad blocker.. hard to take the high ground I think..

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