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The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
11–20 of 249 posts
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#12I'm beginning to find the various articles about ad-blocking fatuous, and I doubt I'm the only one.
Ads served via a centralized vendor can be blocked trivially, and people are choosing to block them. You can make a whole lot of arguments about ethics, or you can just admit that it's a broken business model.
Worse, it is becoming apparent that ads increase the attack surface. Failing to clean that up will cause armies of IT folks to actively work against you.
Maybe the business model is that you're serving ads in a non-centralized way, or maybe you're serving centralized ads to people with locked-down computers, but good luck serving blockable ads and relying on the good graces of the population to unblock your ads out of charity.
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#13What I really can't understand, that permeates this whole discussion, is plenty of people that try to sell the idea that ads let us have content "for free", and that all we have to tolerate is "a little annoyance". It's insane. If companies are buying ad-space, it's because they expect to get more business in return. This means that someone out there is being influenced by said ads, so that if the content cost X to p…
Advertising is the method most people use to discover new products/services.
Of course these days the line is often blurred. So half the posts on HN could be adverts, and you wouldn't really know about it. In fact lots of them are adverts.
But just think about how the world would work without advertising. How would you know there's a star wars movie coming out? How would you know about new products and services you might be interested in buying.
I buy quite a few magazines, and one of the reasons I buy them is for the adverts, which tell me about companies who provide things I might be interested in.
For example, I buy a bee-keeping magazine, which has many adverts related to bee-keeping. That's valuable. I buy a pig magazine, which has adverts for pig arks, pig tags, weaners, etc etc.
Good advertising is a net win for everyone. It provides us information about things we might like. Just because there's some bad advertising on the internet, it doesn't mean all advertising is useless.
What is the alternative model to advertising on the internet? The fact is, that most websites are supported by advertising, and if that goes away, so do the websites unless some other magical income model replaces it.
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#14Before the web, people changed channels or got up during TV commercials, Many people still don't realize it's trivial to have a DVR automatically skip commercials, but advertising companies and TV networks sued TiVo to make sure they will never implement it. Modern web ads and trackers are far over the line for many people today, Not just "over the line," but for over 5 years now, advertising networks have allowed ex…
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Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#15I'm beginning to find the various articles about ad-blocking fatuous, and I doubt I'm the only one. Ads served via a centralized vendor can be blocked trivially, and people are choosing to block them. You can make a whole lot of arguments about ethics, or you can just admit that it's a broken business model. Worse, it is becoming apparent that ads increase the attack surface. Failing to clean that up will cause armie…
Websites offering self hosted, static advertising isn't so much of a problem as random bits of javascript and tracking cookies loaded from god knows where every time you load a page. Harder to block, the advertiser needs to pass their content through the hoster which assures some level of quality and relevance, and some level of privacy for the end viewers.
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#16Before the web, people changed channels or got up during TV commercials, Many people still don't realize it's trivial to have a DVR automatically skip commercials, but advertising companies and TV networks sued TiVo to make sure they will never implement it. Modern web ads and trackers are far over the line for many people today, Not just "over the line," but for over 5 years now, advertising networks have allowed ex…
flattr.com
Is a centralised service. I want to pay "cash", I want my privacy. It is no one's business which things I give money to.
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#17How is ad blocking an ethical issue? I get to control my computer, at least until some legislation passes that says I don't. Even if I don't control my computer entirely, how about my DNS? I have a lot of the more intrusive domains (tynt, doubleclick, etc) set up as 127.0.0.1 in my dnsmasq config. The "whose computer is it anyway" question seems key here. In order to make advertising possible, we have to take control…
OK, so the equivalent would be this:
I buy magazines from the wholesaler. I rip out all the adverts. I then sell them to the public.
I'm acting as a lovely "ad-blocker" for magazines. Is what I'm doing legal or ethical?
Another argument would be is it ethical to block people who have adblock installed. In such an arms race, who will win?
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#18What I really can't understand, that permeates this whole discussion, is plenty of people that try to sell the idea that ads let us have content "for free", and that all we have to tolerate is "a little annoyance". It's insane. If companies are buying ad-space, it's because they expect to get more business in return. This means that someone out there is being influenced by said ads, so that if the content cost X to p…
Advertising is the method most people use to discover new products/services. Of course these days the line is often blurred. So half the posts on HN could be adverts, and you wouldn't really know about it. In fact lots of them are adverts. But just think about how the world would work without advertising. How would you know there's a star wars movie coming out? How would you know about new products and services you m…
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Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#19Why is this becoming an issue now? I've been blocking adverts on-and-off for 10 years or so. Back then it was manually editing a HOSTS file - is it just in the news now because it's becoming slightly easier on iPhone?
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#20Not sure how ethics play into this. If your service is of such low quality that nobody is willing to pay for it, and you resort to ads to support your business.. well, tough. Make something that sells, or try a different way of making a living.
People are blocking ads because nobody likes a firehose of garbage pointed right at their face.
To crank that tired old record, "this sector is ripe for disruption" aka somebody go already make an ad network stand-in where the user can pay the equivalent of per-impression cost and visit any participating site ad-free.