There's something I rarely see discussed: plenty of ads out there range from distasteful to plain disgusting. Sometimes I wonder if people realize what's being show on their websites.
A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
41–50 of 227 posts
Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
#42People are publishing content on the internet without putting it behind a login/password/restricted access. Not only are they publishing it, they're announcing its presence on social media, performing "search engine optimizations", and cross-promoting it on other non-web technologies (radio, tv, printed media, etc.). ... At no point, as a consumer of this content, did I get presented with so much as a simple "In retu…
The ironic thing is that many of the same people who complain about ads also complain about paywalls.
Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
#43Kill ads using a host file. You have to update it every few weeks but it makes the web so much easier to look at. Using a Hosts File To Make The Internet Not Suck (as much) || http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ For backup blocking... Adblock Plus - Surf the web without annoying ads! || https://adblockplus.org/
The host files part was pretty cool. I might not add all the ad/tracking sites, but I definitely added the shock/malware because I know for a fact I won't ever want or need to visit those.
Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
#44I'm so torn on Adblockers. While I agree that advertisers generally don't act in good faith, the penalty falls unfairly on content producers. Two wrongs don't make a right, but maybe the middle ground is to be a responsible website owner who uses best privacy practices around advertising while consumers un-adblock their site. Seems like it's really just an arms race not benefiting content producers, as it is now.
> the penalty falls unfairly on content producers
Not really. No-one is obligated to produce content; if a business model doesn't work, then you probably shouldn't do it.
So what business model should content producers use, if they can't use the "advertising can fund anything" hack? That's a broader conversation, and I think it's the right conversation for our society to have. Advertising is an expensive tax on our economy (and on human well-being) that doesn't need to exist.
Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
But its the content creators being punished, not the ad companies. If anything ad blockers are in their interest since the type of person who blocks ads is probably the type of person to ignore them anyway.
That is a weak argument. You don't need advertising to make money if what you're doing is valuable. People will compensate you for it because they know it will go away if they don't. Take the No Agenda Show[1] for example, they have no advertising. Two podcasters make a living creating six hours of original content every week and are solely supported by their listeners. [1] http://www.noagendashow.com/
There is a legitimate place for marketing. If I cure cancer in my garage but never tell anybody, what I've done can't become valuable.
Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
#46I'm as scared as the next person of all the data being sucked up but if I wanted to be charitable, ... a different pov is perfect advertising which would effectively read your mind and present you info exactly when you need it. Thinking about going on vacation to Vietnam? perfect advertizing would devine that and show you ads for good hotel deals, flights, attractions, restaurants, events, markets, etc in Vietnam. Pe…
No. Perfect advertising will convince you to buy the advertiser's product, regardless of what that is. This is the mindset described in the original article.
You're describing perfect advertising for you.
Even if the ads were limited to a topic you deemed relevant, the advertisers would still essentially lie (or elide truths). E.g., they'd show you good deals on hotels in Vietnam without bothering to mention that people are regularly knifed in those hotels, or that they have bedbugs, etc., etc.
Perfect advertising for the informed consumer would be a list of objective specs that can be compared between similar classes of products, allowing the consumer to choose the best product within their budget, needs, etc. If you're a company that produces an inferior product, how would you advertise it in that scenario? Reduce the selling price, or lie, lie, lie?
Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
#47I think the anger is quite misplaced here by the author as it has never been the ad industry that has done "everything that was within their technical capabilities to spy on people and shovel ads on top of them" as the ad networks are simply a platform for which there are buyers of ads/eyeballs (advertisers) and sites/apps that display said advertising. It's the sites that you use that have chosen to include the code…
>In fact, our reluctance to pay for any type of content has led to the state we are in today.
One way I'm trying to overcome that is to actually pay for content. I've started in a small way by supporting people who producing the content I care about at Patreon.
Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
#48I think the anger is quite misplaced here by the author as it has never been the ad industry that has done "everything that was within their technical capabilities to spy on people and shovel ads on top of them" as the ad networks are simply a platform for which there are buyers of ads/eyeballs (advertisers) and sites/apps that display said advertising. It's the sites that you use that have chosen to include the code…
> In fact, our reluctance to pay for any type of content has led to the state we are in today.
People's reluctance to pay and their aversion to advertising is, I think, understandable and reasonable.
It is just a quirk of the time period that we find ourselves in that there is any "moral" dilemma attached to this situation.
The reason people perceive it as a moral situation is because we've established a society in which one must extract money out of others in order to survive.
Our welfare system is not yet currently capable of providing people with the basic necessities: food, shelter, clothing, clean water, healthcare, education, and equal access to opportunities.
If it were, you would find that the cost of content really would approach $0. If, for example, artists did not have to worry about any of the previously mentioned necessities (if it was just given to them), then most of them would probably be perfectly happy to continue to produce content for free and without advertising.
I know, as a software developer and entrepreneur, that I personally would be happy to not charge anything for any software that I create (or charge very little), if these basics were taken care of.
As more people continue to lose their jobs to robots and automation, we will (if we can avoid destroying ourselves), move in that direction.
Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
#49I'm so torn on Adblockers. While I agree that advertisers generally don't act in good faith, the penalty falls unfairly on content producers. Two wrongs don't make a right, but maybe the middle ground is to be a responsible website owner who uses best privacy practices around advertising while consumers un-adblock their site. Seems like it's really just an arms race not benefiting content producers, as it is now.
I disagree that the penalty falls unfairly on content producers. The content producers choose their business model. If technology makes that model untenable then the content producers must change their model.
Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers
#50Does anybody remember the internet in the early 90s? Before it started getting rammed full of ads and get quick rich startup schemes? It was kind of awesome, kind of a mess. People just put up whatever personal scratch they wanted to itch paid the then outrageous hosting fees ($20/mo for 1MB of space!) and the world was good. My point is that these days, it seems like providing the same experience for most people, in…
> ($20/mo for 1MB of space!)
A friend of mine did computing, but took one unit of fine art... because students got 5MB storage, except for fine art students, who got 10MB... and zMud was 6MB...