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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

#91

Post by eropple »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #76
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…

So find a better business model. If it's not paywalls, and it's not ads, figure it out.

If you want to smarm about a better business model, I invite you to find it yourself. It's much easier to perform that smarm than find one, but I guess if you have to rationalize free ridership it's a good line. And it means you don't have to come to grips with the idea that it's a social problem instead of a free-market-hallowed-be-thy-name problem; it does mean you can mostly wave away that the money needs to come from somewhere and every scalable option involves advertising that free-riders block, native advertising that compromises the integrity of the work (if it's applicable at all), or requiring payment that readers won't pony up for. (Yes, really, every option, you're welcome to bookmark this post and cheetodust about it if one ever comes to fruition but I am comfortable betting my side of the line.)

Fixing the country, though, is ssssocialism, and we can't have that. Instead people who entertain us should beg for scraps, I suppose. That's sustainable.

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

#92

Post by cdcarter »

rosser wrote: post #79
vacri wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that your argument is ludicrous. "What, these people that have been promoting their stuff everywhere have advertising on their site?". It's not like it's unexpected. The idea that each website would have to get your consent to show you ads is outright silly. I don't have a problem with people using adblockers (I use NoScript myself, which has a similar effect), but let's not pretend that it's some kind of…

I'm not a party to the contract between the advertiser and the content provider. In principle, I don't necessarily even have an expectation that a given content provider uses advertising revenue to support the provision of their content — they may use a subscription-based revenue model, and offer some number of "free" page views per day/week/month/whatever, as a teaser to encourage new subscriptions. They may just ha…

Actually, I don't think it's a fair point to say that "I chose to view the ads on that page" is specious and unsupported at all. Those ads are part of the markup and makeup of that page.

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

#93

Post by justinpaulson »

I used to be in defense of the targeted ad movement, but I have completely changed my views. When I finally found out that even my gmail was being surveyed to build a profile about me, I decided that personally it had gone too far. But if we really want to change it we have to stop playing into the business model and we have to start educating the users. That is one of the main reasons that I started Rebil (shamless plug: rebil.co ). I plan to fight this battle not with adblock, but by creating products that are open and honest with their consumers and deal openly in currency rather than hidden data transactions. The question is, will consumers value their data and their privacy enough to pay for services? I think they will and I am betting on it.

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

#94

Post by [deleted] »

soheil wrote: post #86

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…

[deleted]

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

#95

Post by jcoffland »

soheil wrote: post #86

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…

Beloved businesses? Do you mean Facebook? Or perhaps Google? Come on. The best parts of the Internet have always been free. Advertizing made that possible like the lampray made the trout.

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

#96

Post by Forlien »

xai3luGi wrote: post #70
curiouscats wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is valid. If you rely on something that causes people harm that must be factored in when they seek to minimize their risk. I don't use ad blockers because I generally support your position. I do block flash because it is so annoying and especially noisy ads and downloading video I didn't ask for on my limited bandwidth. It seems to me it isn't 100% either way. There is an issue of being a free-riding meanie…

> I didn't ask for on my limited bandwidth. Your browser asked for it though. Maybe fix you browser so it isn't doing things you don't like? Of course with HTTP/2, websites will be able to send you stuff that even your browser didn't ask for.

Isn't fixing his browser exactly what curiouscats is doing by blocking flash?

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

#98

Post by trimbo »

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

Then how come, every time I pay for content, that content still has ads? The paywalled newspaper sites I frequent do this. Or, notice how they do this in every movie theater in America now -- you can't sit there in peace before a movie. Instead, before the trailers start, you're subjected to a barrage of loud ads.

Even on the March Madness app -- I've logged in with my Comcast credentials, they are going to show me the regular TV ads, and yet they make me miss live game action to show me ads specific to the app! And they do this every time you leave the app and come back.

Every place that an ad can be placed, it will eventually be placed, in every medium and whether a consumer paid for that content or not. Throwing ads in our face is so widely abused that I'm completely unsurprised that adblockers are mainstream and still growing. Our web browser is one of the few places we still have control.

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

#99

Post by rosser »

cdcarter wrote: post #92
rosser wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a party to the contract between the advertiser and the content provider. In principle, I don't necessarily even have an expectation that a given content provider uses advertising revenue to support the provision of their content — they may use a subscription-based revenue model, and offer some number of "free" page views per day/week/month/whatever, as a teaser to encourage new subscriptions. They may just ha…

Actually, I don't think it's a fair point to say that "I chose to view the ads on that page" is specious and unsupported at all. Those ads are part of the markup and makeup of that page.

But that's exactly my point: without loading an arbitrary page, I can't know whether or not there are ads embedded in its markup.

If a page's headers could somehow tell me, "Hey! This page has ads! Do you still want to load it?", and I choose to continue viewing the page, then I've consented.

Absent that kind of exchange, I am in principle being involuntarily subject to unwanted content.

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

#100

Post by deciplex »

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'm more concerned with the anthropomorphism of an entire industry. This line of reasoning ignores the fact that The Ad Industry is not A Person With A Memory And Coherent History but rather just an almost-random sample of people with jobs. If the industry was immoral ten years ago, that doesn't mean it's immoral now, and it doesn't mean that most of the people that make it up are immoral - then or now.

But, your counter-argument is not really a valid counter-argument, either. If we act as though the present incarnation of the ad industry is to be held responsible for its past actions, that will encourage moral behavior going forward and discourage hypocrisy. Of course, I'm still anthropomorphizing the ad industry here, and assuming that it's even capable of "learning a lesson" might be assuming too much (for the record, I think it mostly is assuming too much). But I think that's supposed to be the point - sort of. By anthropomorphizing a thing, we might force that thing to behave somewhat anthropomorphically. Or, we might not.

I think we're all just trying to rationalize our behavior which is that we don't like looking at ads, and we have the technical means to block ads, so we block ads. Anything more than that feels awfully post-hoc.

By blocking ads, you're denying revenue to people whose content you wish to consume. There is no way around this fact. Maybe, by doing this, you will encourage forms of revenue generation that are less intrusive, or maybe you want to encourage a culture where revenue generation isn't necessary, or any of a thousand other 'reasons'. But, I think that if you tell yourself that this is the primary reason that you block ads, as opposed to 'I find ads irritating and don't wish to view them', you should take special care to look really hard for some cognitive bias in your thinking, because you'll almost certainly find some.

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