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Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

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Re: Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it also unethical to not read the ads in a newspaper? Or to not watch the commercials on TV?

If it was automated and you still consumed the other resources (paid largely or entirely by ad impressions) then that case could be made.

One way to figure out if a case could be made, or if something is “arguably” true, is to try and make a case or argument and see if it works. Just speculating that it might be possible to make a case is kind of weasel-wordy.

Re: Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

#92
post #48

> It's important to note that blocking ads is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea, which is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy. This is something I've never actually focused on but it's wild the amount of people I've installed AdBlock and ublock for who think it's something nefarious.

[flagged]

I get where you're coming from. The free content is possible because of the advertisements, and you are sort of consenting to the ads when you choose to visit the site. It's not an explicit agreement but it is at least an understanding of what lets the wheels keep turning.

However, when ads are so obtrusive that they slow down my computer or ruin the use of the site completely, or if they have malware payloads (does happen) then I'm quite happy to use an ad blocker. I didn't use one until I started encountering this kind of nonsense regularly.

Re: Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stance is absurd. It's your device, you choose what content you want to consume on it. Do you imagine a world where you buy a monitor and once every hour it shows you fullscreen ads from the device manufacturer without your consent? Maybe you do, but for everyone else that's a dystopia.

Visiting sites consume resources. If you walk into a store and take a gift card you're still consuming resources meant to be paid for, even if they're mostly digital resources. Regardless of the car or shoes you used to do it. I don't welcome a world of paid products that also include ads. Yet ads do make some paid products cheaper, like say a Kindle or a TV. Folks blocking ads from a premium product probably have a…

I think a more fitting analogy would be walking into a store to sit down and cool off with no intent of buying anything. You are "taking" passive resources (air conditioning, space, potentially employee attention). Would you consider that to be unethical?

Personally, I don't believe ad blocking is unethical because I don't believe the ways in which advertisers collect and sell their data is ethical.

Re: Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

#94

> These don't benefit us, the website users, in any way Except for, you know, allowing those websites to exist in the first place? Ads and data are nothing but a form of payment, the gold or salt of the internet age. The alternative to ads isn't no ads, it's paywalls and subscriptions. If ads didn't exist or weren't as accurate as they can be with invasive tracking, we'd have far less content out there, and most of t…

> The alternative to ads isn't no ads, it's paywalls and subscriptions.

Great. An alternative is an honest way to conduct business. We'll take it.

We could get rid of all that click-bait AI-generate crap and not waste everyone's time, among tons of other benefits.

Re: Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

#95
post #34
post #30

Thibault (the creator of lichess) is a really impressive human being. I don’t idolize people but he is quite inspiring. There’s an old perpetual chess podcast episode where he said he has never seen a single ad that was useful :-) Which is somewhat extreme and probably hyperbole but still his philosophy is loud and clear.

On this subject, I did see an ad for a small music festival near my hometown, and i brought the ticket and had a good time. If i had not seen the add, I would not have known about the festival, so I actually did at least once see a useful ad

How’d you get the ad? It seems like something that could be posted on a coffee shop bulletin board for example, or placed in the culture section of a local newspaper. In other words, environment and location are all that are really needed, we wouldn’t need to send somebody to stalk you (like Facebook or Google) in order to show you this ad.

Ads are only good for things with broad appeal like that.

Re: Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

#98

Does anyone know the difference between personalDNSfilter (recommended by lichess) and Blokada for DNS-based blocking? I use the latter on my phone.

both work in the same way, by setting up a proxy/local-vpn through which all traffic passes in order to filter ad hosts at the dns level.

Re: Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

#99

> These don't benefit us, the website users, in any way Except for, you know, allowing those websites to exist in the first place? Ads and data are nothing but a form of payment, the gold or salt of the internet age. The alternative to ads isn't no ads, it's paywalls and subscriptions. If ads didn't exist or weren't as accurate as they can be with invasive tracking, we'd have far less content out there, and most of t…

This is clearly not true; Wikipedia isn't ad supported and is incredibly successful and prolific. You can use educational tools like WolframAlpha freely and pay (using a normal subscription model) for its more advanced features, no advertising required. KhanAcademy is completely free (yes I know they host many of their videos on YouTube; that's a minority of the content on KA these days and I suspect would be a relatively minor hosting cost at this point based on how tiny and easy to compress their video presentation style is).

The internet would be different, yes. We'd probably see much less of a gold-rush than we've historically seen. I think it would still be just as much of a treasure in learning and communication as it is today though.

Re: Lichess: Block Ads and Trackers

#100

> These don't benefit us, the website users, in any way Except for, you know, allowing those websites to exist in the first place? Ads and data are nothing but a form of payment, the gold or salt of the internet age. The alternative to ads isn't no ads, it's paywalls and subscriptions. If ads didn't exist or weren't as accurate as they can be with invasive tracking, we'd have far less content out there, and most of t…

>The alternative to ads isn't no ads, it's paywalls and subscriptions.

You do realize Lichess is free has no adds / paywalls or subscription ?

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