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Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk

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Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#101

Post by ectopod »

silicon2401 wrote: post #30
float_laugh wrote: post #20

I have a degree in marketing, took a vow never to work in it, and use these words to describe advertisements - Motivated deception, manipulation, mind control, inauthentic, inorganic, insincere, a betrayal by your peers. They're using your own mind against you with psycological techniques you're blind to. Behind every advertisement is a group of real life people working hard to find new ways to control and manipulate…

The Century of the Self is a great introduction to this. Modern advertising literally uses techniques originally developed for wartime (WWII) propaganda. Commercial advertising is literally brainwashing applied for economic purposes rather than political (though often both, too). p.s. if you like the Century of the Self, watch Hypernormalization as well. Amazing documentaries.

Actually WWI. The clue is in the name of the doc.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#102

Post by harry8 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #63
harry8 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh to HELL with that garbage. I don't get paid for 99.9% of the ads that infest my daily life. I get no say in it at all. There is no off switch. There is no block. There is no avoiding it. The logos are everywhere. The posters. The visual and audible noise. Advertising has infested my childhood memories FFS. I can recite more goddamn jingles from when I was under 10 than I can remember my friends and classmates name…

> The idea that it is unethical to block when having punches thrown at you as we are is just so incredibly ridiculous it's hard to see it other than facebrick google paid propaganda that you've taken to heart somehow. As I say, it doesn't need to be ethical. On your comment: of course, no one is throwing punches at you. It's just advertising. You don't have to go to the website that has it on.

You're actually serious?

Advertising is designed to make you feel shit (inadequate) and does it so effectively people kill themselves with anorexia over it to cite but one example.

It's like a prostitute saying their pimp doesn't /really/ hurt them when they get a beating.

Your other option is not to just "not go to _the_ website" because you have no choice other than to unplug and live in a cave. Defending yourself and your family as best you can from the onslaught isn't just ethical it's actually a duty to your family and fellow humans. Do it. Any way you can manage. Every way.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#103

Post by jefftk »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #100
jefftk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think running an ad blocker is freeloading, the same as using paywall-bypassing software. There are worse things people regularly do, but I do think it's minorly wrong and I don't run an ad blocker. I would be fine with ad blockers that only blocked ads, as long as publishers could chose to refuse service to users running ad blockers or ask them to turn their ad blocker off. But uBlock Origin etc don't just block a…

Let’s say there’s a hamburger restaurant. Now, this hamburger restaurant has an interesting business model. They way it works is, they give out burgers for free. They do that because they get money from lettuce producers to put lettuce in their burgers. It’s a pretty good model right? People get free burgers and lettuce producers get their lettuce in the peoples mouths. I personally don’t like lettuce. I removed it f…

This is a pretty weird analogy, because I don't see what the lettuce producers are getting out of it. But ok, let's say that the government is strongly in favor of people eating more vegetables, and richly compensates lettuce producers for each leaf of their lettuce is eaten. The deal the burger producers have with the lettuce producers includes putting cameras in the restaurants, so money only changes hands when people actually do eat the lettuce. The government audits these logs, to ensure their subsidy is being spent effectively.

Then yes: in this contrived analogy by taking the burger but not eating the lettuce you're freeloading. The more people that do this, the less likely the restaurant is to continue being able to provide free food to anyone that wants it. And I think it would be pretty reasonable for them to have signs like "patrons who do not eat their vegetables will be asked to leave" and "strictly no takeout".

The part of your analogy where you say people who want burgers don't have any other choice seems not to fit: you can eat other foods which don't have this requirement, just like there are lots of places on the internet where you can exchange money for ad-free content.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#104

Post by robertlagrant »

krapp wrote: post #85
mmcgaha wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know there is a lot of push back against pay walls but I would rather give money to a business that I know than to have some creepy unknown entity record everything I do.

They're going to record everything you do anyway - the choice being offered is an illusion. There is no way to opt out of surveillance capitalism (other than blocking ads and piracy,) only ways to opt in further.

Or don't visit the sites with it on. There's no way to opt out of state surveillance.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#105

Post by ridgered4 »

chii wrote: post #44
horsawlarway wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The quid pro quo of the site is you pay nothing to see this, but you look at the ads that pay for the site. But this isn't the fucking model. The model is: We created compelling content that draws lots of views, and companies will pay us to plaster their name/products on it. There is literally zero contract with the person being shown the ads at all. They can do as they please. If companies don't like that... move…

> move to a different model - stop showing your stuff for free. what if that model was a contract to the viewer, wherein the viewer agrees to see all adverts? Currently this contract is assumed, or implied, but not enforced. What if it changes in the future? For example, youtube could require that you have a webcam, and run a trusted-computing-module DRM code which forces your webcam to be on and recording your face…

I believe Microsoft or Sony actually has a patent on this. It was the inspiration for the increasingly prescient 4chan greentext "drink a verification can".

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#106

Post by blooalien »

sushibowl wrote: post #7

I feel like any argument that starts with the idea that blocking ads is unethical would inevitably lead to that black mirror episode where the ad pauses if you close your eyes or look away, and you must pay to skip it. Closing your eyes is just another ad blocking measure, and the idea that that would be unethical ought to be utterly preposterous.

Rest assured that if advertisers could display ads on the inside of your eyelids and charge you a fee to open your eyes, they absolutely would not hesitate for even one single second over "ethical issues" before implementing it world-wide.

If there's an actual literal Hell, then Lucifer surely has an extra cushy corner of it set aside for advertisers, and he'll force the rest of us to march through it with our eyes open wide several times daily between our other tortures…

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#107

Post by meter »

I have a friend that intentionally disables Adblock on YouTube in order to support the creators that he likes. He feels that, if he disables Adblock, the creators will get less money.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m very curious to hear other opinions.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#108

Post by b3morales »

robertlagrant wrote: post #56
horsawlarway wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The quid pro quo of the site is you pay nothing to see this, but you look at the ads that pay for the site. But this isn't the fucking model. The model is: We created compelling content that draws lots of views, and companies will pay us to plaster their name/products on it. There is literally zero contract with the person being shown the ads at all. They can do as they please. If companies don't like that... move…

I'm not sure if this adds anything. I know there's no contract. But while the system can shoulder a certain load of parasitic behaviour, if everyone does as you say then it stops working. So practically speaking it is a quid quo pro. A better analogue for your description is something like the Guardian website, where you don't have to pay for it, but it does require a certain number of people to volunteer to subscrib…

Even the paywalled sites still have ads behind the paywalls, though. I bought a digital subscription to a prominent, reputable news magazine recently. I paid as much as they would let me pay. And still the text of every article was interspersed three or four times with utter crap "advertisement". I mean "eat this one fruit to clean your liver" level of banner. I'm not going to bother paying if I also still have to deal with that sludge.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#109

Post by HungSu »

meter wrote: post #107

I have a friend that intentionally disables Adblock on YouTube in order to support the creators that he likes. He feels that, if he disables Adblock, the creators will get less money. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m very curious to hear other opinions.

A long term consequence of using an ad blocker is that ad networks only show ads to people who don't use ad blockers, who generally speaking are less tech savvy. The ad networks respond by tailoring to them, and writers who are funded by ads shift their writing towards that audience.

Matthew Butterick describes the effect much better here: https://practicaltypography.com/vote-with-your-wallet.html

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#110

Post by blooalien »

mcv wrote: post #62
chii wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> move to a different model - stop showing your stuff for free. what if that model was a contract to the viewer, wherein the viewer agrees to see all adverts? Currently this contract is assumed, or implied, but not enforced. What if it changes in the future? For example, youtube could require that you have a webcam, and run a trusted-computing-module DRM code which forces your webcam to be on and recording your face…

It's not assumed or implied at all. Nobody has any inherent right to my attention. If a content producer gets advertisers to pay them, good for them, but that doesn't mean I have to look at those ads. > youtube could require that you have a webcam That would be the end of Youtube. But I'm pretty sure someone will write a plugin to work around that piece of dystopian hell.

> "Nobody has any inherent right to my attention."

Nor to your Internet bandwidth which you pay for and which on some providers is a (artificially) limited "resource" they'll charge you extra for if you use "too much" of it (unless they're like NetZero back in the day, delivering you free Internet in trade for forced adverts)… Nor to potentially compromise the security of your network (as has happened in the past due to some "shady" advertising networks delivering malware)… Nor to interfere with paid content (as happens on some streaming services which still show ads despite you paying to view the content).

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