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A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

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Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

#81

Post by mcbutterbunz »

jotux wrote: post #28

>The ad industry has spent years cultivating a 'fuck you' attitude where they would do everything that was within their technical capabilities to spy on people and shovel ads on top of them. To now suddenly be concerned about the 'morality' of what other people do is the height of hypocrisy. The ad industry has lived by the sword of 'technical capabilities are all that matters' (to the detriment of basically everyone…

I don't think that's necessarily the argument. Rather, the argument is that it's okay to fight back.

Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

#83

Post by DSMan195276 »

jotux wrote: post #52
calbear81 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. If an ad isn't displayed, then the impression probably doesn't count and the publishing site doesn't get paid. It would certainly hurt the content creator more.

>It would certainly hurt the content creator more. I think you could make the argument that you affect the content creator to a higher degree (larger percent of income) but I suspect you affect the ad company to a higher dollar amount. Nonetheless it's a negative for both.

The content creator gets paid by the ad company for showing you the ad, the ad company gets paid if you click on it.

With that in mind, there is a net-positive outcome for the ad-company if users who aren't going to click on the ads use ad-block, because that means they don't have to pay the content creator for showing ads that nobody clicked on. They only miss possible profit if you're using ad-block but would have clicked on an ad were it presented to you, which is unlikely considering ad-block is generally opt-in. Depending on the ratio of how much they make per-click vs. how much they pay the content-creator per ad, they could definitely come-out with more money due to users using ad-block and not requiring them to pay the content creator when they wouldn't have clicked on the ad anyway.

Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

#84

Post by eropple »

enraged_camel wrote: post #6

I envision a future where the default mode is silence, and all advertising is opt-in. If I need to buy a t-shirt, I press a button that temporarily subscribes me to a "channel" of advertisements from t-shirt brands, along with whatever relevant preferences I decide to filter the ads by. In other words, I give companies explicit permission to advertise to me. Once I buy a t-shirt and fulfill the need, I unsubscribe fr…

Unless the people who use ad-blockers get in the habit of paying for content--and they won't, because why pay for what you can free-ride for?--this would be a disaster. Immediately actionable ads are only a slice of the advertising market; the point of advertising is not to sell you something now. It is to eventually sell you something. Both brand and market reinforcement advertising are major players.

Advertising creates demand and establishes brand awareness in potential consumers who may develop (either directed or otherwise) demand in the future.

Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

#85

Post by billwilliams »

billwilliams wrote: post #74
billwilliams wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly, no big publishers / ad networks really care about adblock. A vocal minority use it and think their convenience is socially progressive. The only people feeling the burn are niche sites that happen to have a core demographic which overlaps with adblocker users. Big companies don't care, and the second they do - they'll just block people from using their service who have adblock until its disabled.

And as long as we're all whining in one direction or the other, the average U.S. citizen still watches more than 25 hours of tv per week. So we're all just yelling into the ether of the tech-haves for the next 20 years while that number slowly drops.

To continue said yelling, a point that I haven't noticed mentioned on here yet - since when do consumers get to decide how much they pay for a service? Or how? If I want to sell you x for y - we don't live in a society where you get to decide what y is, or how to pay it. I think capitalism is dumb - therefore I won't pay in money but I will pay in labor I do for you. And you have no choice in the matter. I will take your hamburger and be in your house at 8am sharp. I will rake your leaves. Your yard will be the envy of the whole neighborhood. This is my anarchism. I will inflict it upon you, you cursed content publisher.

Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

#86

Post by soheil »

We would simply not have many of the greatest web companies today if it was not because of ads. It's one solution that works and works really well. To call it immoral is to ignore everything that it has given us. You can complain about the annoyances of it and rightly so, but if you are going to bring in morality, first you must consider and imagine an internet or world without some of the most beloved businesses in it. I don't believe in a consequentialist argument either that just because something good comes out of an immoral thing then it justifies it given the benefits outweigh the harms. I would agree with you if that were true. I simply disagree with the assertion that ads are immoral or immoral to the extend that you seem to imply, I'd argue they're more of annoyance than anything else. And the burden of proof is really on you to tell us why ads are immoral since you're the one making the assertion, so far I haven't seen that, and until then or until when we find an alternative, ads are here to stay, and rightly so if I may say.

Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

#87

Post by buzzworth »

A lot of misplaced anger here. The most beloved services and content exist because of advertisers. Put yourself in the shoes of somebody trying to create a new Internet publication, casual video game, search engine, social network, or most any other online business. What do you imagine a successful business plan will be? Paywalls? Good luck with that :-p

The rant is written as though advertisers snuck into the media, as though they infiltrated, they used subterfuge to penetrate an otherwise non-commercial, innocent world of dollar-free self-expression.

The whole thing is backwards. Advertisers and the advertising industry were the parents and premise of this world, not its covert invaders. I find it sad to see folks forgetting which industry we have to thank for the very forums on which we (piously!) castigate it.

As somebody who would like to build a business himself on the back of the Internet, my feeling on the existence of so frictionless a currency as advertising is mostly gratitude.

Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

#88

Post by billwilliams »

jotux wrote: post #52
calbear81 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. If an ad isn't displayed, then the impression probably doesn't count and the publishing site doesn't get paid. It would certainly hurt the content creator more.

>It would certainly hurt the content creator more. I think you could make the argument that you affect the content creator to a higher degree (larger percent of income) but I suspect you affect the ad company to a higher dollar amount. Nonetheless it's a negative for both.

Its disproportionately high for the publisher. Niche sites with demographics that overlap with adblockers demographic get hit harder than other sites. The ad company will find other places to serve their ads (unless its a product catering to the same demo). (Full disclosure, I work in ads and ad blocker has never cut into our cash money. That being said I'd be interested to hear from another advertiser who has been affected)

Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

#89

Post by alecdbrooks »

scrollaway wrote: post #72
alecdbrooks wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... At no point, as a consumer of this content, did I get presented with so much as a simple "In return for consuming this content, you agree that you will look at the ads being shown here". Isn't it common knowledge that many sites rely on ads for their revenue? Sit-down restaurants in the U.S. don't tell you as you walk in that you're expected to tip, but it's common knowledge that wait staff aren't paid minimum w…

> Sit-down restaurants in the U.S. don't tell you as you walk in that you're expected to tip, but it's common knowledge that wait staff aren't paid minimum wage because customers are expected to tip. That's also something the rest of the world scratches its head about. I'm not sure the best way to make your point is to use an example of how absurd the US is.

American tipping isn't a particularly good system, but it's unkind to not tip if it means cheating the wait staff out of their wages.

Similarly, ads have issues, but blocking them is not fair to the creator, who reasonably expected ad impressions in exchange for creating the content and paying for visitors' traffic.

Re: A note on the argument about the 'morality' of adblockers

#90

Post by s3r3nity »

sohkamyung wrote: post #47
calbear81 wrote: post #18

I 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.

+1 to you and I agree this is a nice step - though it doesn't work at scale, nor is it 100% appropriate for the ideals of the web. If you think about the web as the penultimate democracy for content, where content of the highest quality is available to even the poorest person, then saying "pay for this or you'll remain ignorant" is just not fair.

Example: I would be more ok if Coursera/Udacity and the like went with an ad-based model rather than a pay-per-view model. Why? Because the people it's meant to help - the individual who can't afford to take out massive loans to pay for school or the kid from the bad side of town - can't really benefit if it costs 100's or 1000's of $$ to study, say, computer science or the like.

Retort: But there are a number of other free resources! See link here or here! Retort back: Those aren't the highest quality, and usually those are free because: a) they're supported by ad spend b) they're supported by VC funding and will eventually move behind a paywall of some sort eventually.

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