301–310 of 844 posts
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I guess I assumed too much, then -- where's the dubious morality come from?
Because the implicit agreement of a site with adverts is that the content's available to you with the adverts on it. If you don't like that you don't have to read it, but if you remove them automatically then I think it's hard to argue you aren't breaking an implied agreement.
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The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons, and one of those reasons was that people actually liked ads and wanted them. This line of reasoning has completely disappeared from the mainstream. I think that's a problem for the ad companies. They have not yet lost the war, but it seems they have lost the argument.
I remember this. "People want personalized information on products they are interested in. How else would they find out about them?" As if people would be at a loss buying a car or breakfast cereal or a pair of shoes without ads.
I get what you're trying to say, but here's a counter example. I have a hobby of astrophography. I live in a rural area without many other people nearby interested in the stars, much less a highly technical hobby like astrophography.
Asking on message boards like cloudynights, or reddit gets you a lot of well meaning beginners offering advice outside of their skill level.
I'm currently building an observatory and I need input on which mount to use in my observatory. I don't have a good concept of what to buy for it as I've only dealt with really beginner mounts and I'm not a beginner anymore, and there's no astrophography retail stores within travel distance. Online advice is poor and hard to weed out those who are beginners meaning well and those who actually know what they're talking about.
However, to pull us back to what we're talking about here, I get a magazine for the industry called Sky and Telescope and it has ads. To me, ads are one of the best things about that magazine because it lets me know what options I have that I wouldn't otherwise be aware of, or have any way to compare.
Though to be fair, ads in a magazine don't spy on you, don't infect your computer, don't move and steal attention and don't follow you around. But I think there is a place for targeted, well behaved ads.
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I guess I assumed too much, then -- where's the dubious morality come from?
Because the implicit agreement of a site with adverts is that the content's available to you with the adverts on it. If you don't like that you don't have to read it, but if you remove them automatically then I think it's hard to argue you aren't breaking an implied agreement.
* This implicit agreement is too open to exploitation. Many people don't understand the depth of the tracking/ad ecosystem. If the full cost were explained to them, they might not agree to that exchange. I think I do understand it (well, probably it is worse than I expect, but whatever), but if the ad companies get to interpret this implicit relationship in the way that benefits them, then why can't I? I think the agreement should be explicit, and some sites do make it explicit -- they block people like me. Fair game! I'm sure they won't miss me, I can be quite annoying.
* I'm not sure I believe in this implicit agreement anyway. From the beginning, the design of the internet has been that information is sent to the browser, and then rendered in line with the client's needs. If I use elinks, lynx, or some graphical browser without javascript is that morally dubious? What if I'd like to minimize the amount of javascript I run, but selectively enable it as necessary, like umatrix?
* The underlying goal of the people placing the ads is not just to get something rendered on a screen somewhere, right? Their goal is to capture some attention. As you say, you don't read the ads. I could browse a while and train myself to ignore them too. At which point... the person who placed the ad still doesn't get what they wanted. At least if I block the ad, there's at least some chance that they'll detect that, and maybe the poor fool who paid for the placement can get a refund.
- Banksy
In FireFox I have my ad blockers disabled in Private Mode so nothing is getting in the way if I'm testing or some site is being weird. Sometimes it's SHOCKINGLY different how a page looks with the blockers in place. I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one. The web is a much better place with a blocker in place. (Yes, I know, we get a…
There was a report last year that more than 37% of UK traffic in people under 30 had an ad blocker enabled. I think the analytics market is going to have to shift to server-side tracking in the next 5 years if this trend continues globally. I welcome it, though.
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That's actually a pretty good strategy and I am inclined to try it.
Someone just convinced you to voluntarily watch more ads.
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One market where this has always been a problem is tools. So almost 20 years ago we were told in shop class that the industry magazines and reviews were basically all paid for by manufacturers. The solution we learned was to always buy the cheapest option first. If it breaks or fails to meet your needs understand how and why and then move on to a more costly tool that you can demonstrate is better in the specific way…
Sometimes the cost for a quality piece of gear is incremental though, so you buy a harbor freight thingamajig then it breaks so you buy the Milwaukee thingamajigfor twice the price, for a total of 300% of the cost of the original thing. You could have saved 30% in that case by just buying the good thing in the first place.
In FireFox I have my ad blockers disabled in Private Mode so nothing is getting in the way if I'm testing or some site is being weird. Sometimes it's SHOCKINGLY different how a page looks with the blockers in place. I really can't believe anyone would user a browser without an ad blocker if they knew how things would look while using one. The web is a much better place with a blocker in place. (Yes, I know, we get a…
I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now reached adulthood knowing nothing but that hustle touching every bit of media they ever interact with. W…
I believe this is true about society in general and has gone on since long before 2003. Almost every ill in modern society can be drawn back to some people doing their best to convince other people to buy shit from them. At this point, I think we should make a serious political effort to outright ban advertising and marketing entirely. Whatever the results of that are, I seriously doubt they'd be worse than what we have.
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> You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well You can't research good appliances either online, because the SERPs are stuffed with SEO-ed blogs and sometimes industry magazines, monetized with Amazon affiliates or other networks, with titles like "5 best dishwashers in 2022". Unless you know someone in the industry or offline with knowledge you don't know what to buy. This is noticeable in many…
One market where this has always been a problem is tools. So almost 20 years ago we were told in shop class that the industry magazines and reviews were basically all paid for by manufacturers. The solution we learned was to always buy the cheapest option first. If it breaks or fails to meet your needs understand how and why and then move on to a more costly tool that you can demonstrate is better in the specific way…
On that note though, an even worse practice is when a brand achieves notoriety for quality and starts making "light" versions of their tools. One example of this before they went belly up was Craftsman making nearly identical looking "Sears" brand that weren't covered by the craftsman warranty. Bosch also did this with pimping out their brand name to extend to rather crappy home appliances here in the EU. Black and Decker was synonymous with reliability in the early 80s, and I still have some jigsaws and circular saws from my dad that work great from that era, but anything from them now is arguably worse than the cheapest things you can buy at Harbor Freight.