The ethics of modern web ad-blocking • Hacker News Board

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#131

Post by commentzorro » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #8

RodericDay wrote: post #7

What 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 an arms race.

I thank you for your worship.

--Vishvarupa

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#132

Post by Avshalom » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

RodericDay wrote: post #76

chatmasta wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If these costs are being borne evenly, then it's complete societal waste. That doesn't make sense. You are saying because User reads Content, Advertiser pays Content, and User pays Advertiser, that the middle step of Advertiser paying Content is unnecessary, because User could pay Content. Simple counterexample: I like reading techcrunch, but would never pay for it. But I might see an ad for a new device that I lik…

See, I really like markets, and I have a problem with phrases like: > I like reading techcrunch, but would never pay for it. Sounds to me a lot like Mitt Romney talking about how his wife has the most important job in the world, but she's essentially his unpaid housewife. Sounds hollow. You are paying for techcrunch, by buying products advertised on it. It would be good for the finances of everyone in society to know…

>See, I really like markets, and I have a problem with phrases like:

>> I like reading techcrunch, but would never pay for it.

Like most people in the world I can't trade time for money beyond a certain threshold AND I can't usually use that money and earn it simultaneously. While my attention is also limited it's something I can split so many people can pay for a small portion of my attention while I am simultaneously using whatever those fractions of attention are paying for.

Thats why "What I'll Spend Money On" is not the same as "What I Like" (in this case, there are of course various other situations in which they are different for other reasons)

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#133

Post by VLM » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #29

It would be great if the ad business model on the web died. Hopefully the new business models that would popup would be more upfront. People used to pay 25 cents to read a newspaper or a few bucks for a magazine.

>People used to pay 25 cents to read a newspaper

When you didn't have a world wide internet there was a lot of friction meaning you end up with 5000 newspapers all publishing the same junk for 25 cents because on average any community only had 1 or 2 choices at most and the local oligopoly, not wanting to go out of business, agreed to charge 25 cents.

You put all 5000 on the internet, you really need 4998 of them to go out of business before you can think of going oligopoly and raising prices to 25 cents again. That has to happen first. Most of the competition has to die off before prices can rise again.

In the paper newspaper days, culture supported about as many journalists as police detectives, roughly, which is a lot. In the internet era you need about as many journalists as there are pro football players, roughly. A lot of journalism schools need to close, lots of people need new jobs, its not merely closing out legacy newspaper corporations. Until the "supply" of journalist humans drops by a factor of 100 to 1000, there isn't going to be much money to be made in that field.

It is like being in the horse buggy business around a century ago. Another interesting analogy might be village blacksmith vs the industrial nationwide factory. When one guy at one machine can manufacture an entire nations widgets, there isn't any requirement anymore for every village blacksmith to hand make widgets.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#134

Post by RodericDay » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

loco5niner wrote: post #103

RodericDay wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I really like markets, and I have a problem with phrases like: > I like reading techcrunch, but would never pay for it. Sounds to me a lot like Mitt Romney talking about how his wife has the most important job in the world, but she's essentially his unpaid housewife. Sounds hollow. You are paying for techcrunch, by buying products advertised on it. It would be good for the finances of everyone in society to know…

> Sounds to me a lot like Mitt Romney talking about how his wife has the most important job in the world, but she's essentially his unpaid housewife. Sounds hollow. No, he's actually saying that raising the next generation is the most important job in the world. aka, Mom. And I think he's right.

He's paying lip service to that idea. As acdha points out, he's not "putting his money where his mouth is".

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#135

Post by hsod » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

bediger4000 wrote: post #5

How 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…

The ethical argument, which is briefly considered in this article, is that by blocking ads you are violating an implied agreement with the site owners.

Legality and technology are irrelevant, it's simply a question of whether or not such an implied agreement exists and whether or not it is ethical to break it.

My opinion is that such an agreement does exist, and that it is a (very minor) unethical act to break it, and that it is a much larger unethical act to brag gleefully about breaking it as many are doing in this thread.

The virtuous way to respond to an untenable agreement is to avoid it altogether, not to take the parts that benefit you and violate the parts that don't.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#136

Post by guelo » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #65

guelo wrote: post #29

It would be great if the ad business model on the web died. Hopefully the new business models that would popup would be more upfront. People used to pay 25 cents to read a newspaper or a few bucks for a magazine.

Unfortunately we have a prisoner's dilemma where people will defect from "costs a little money" to "free with ads" to "free and I block the ads" to "no content."

We'll never get to "no content" because people want quality content and are willing to pay. It's just a matter of the market figuring out how to match supply and demand. There will be a lot of failures along the way but it will happen.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#137

Post by codezero » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #96

codezero wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most ads are served by an ad network which requires third party involvement. Adblockers block those. It's not manageable to post individual ads.

But why can't they arrange some alternate setup where the main site serves the ads (relaying the ads from another server) rather than the ad network? It would be roughly the same effort from the site owner.

Serving on the main site leaves the attribution for views/click throughs in the hands of the site owner, who may or may not tell the truth about the success of the ads.

I'm sure there are lots of ways to work this out though, it's likely that they are more complex or more unreliable than what already exists, or nobody has thought of a better way that meets the needs of 1) advertisers 2) ad networks 3) content providers in a practical way.

If anyone comes up with such a system, it may do well, but then again, you'd have to get that system adopted somehow.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#138

Post by SilasX » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

lotu wrote: post #127

SilasX wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why can't they arrange some alternate setup where the main site serves the ads (relaying the ads from another server) rather than the ad network? It would be roughly the same effort from the site owner.

Because the main site owner then has to spend time coordinating with literally thousands of advertisers to get their ads for their champagnes. They then have a build an maintain an adverser that is hosted in their domain, right now ad servers you buy are hosted in a separate domain. This also eliminates the possibility of do programatic buying of ads, think Ad Words. Large companies have the money to spend on this, t…

They would just have to agree on a common protocol for the advertiser to pass back what what each bit of ad content looks like. It wouldn't prevent programmatic buying of ads, as you could still forward over the cookies, user data, and other information submitted with request and the advertiser could still condition the ad on this information.

>What you are suggesting would cut every small company out of the advertising space.

I'm confused by your phrasing: I was suggesting a countermeasure, not mandating something that would cut people out of any market. And it would certainly be hard now, because there isn't a common interface for setting up the ad relaying, but that's exactly how thing were in the early web: having an ad provider place ads on your site required a custom[1] solution until there was a common way of doing it.

[1] sorry, "bespoke" is the hip term now...

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#139

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

ksk wrote: post #55

bediger4000 wrote: post #5

How 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…

That is not a good argument to make. The corollary is that the telecom companies "own" their infrastructure. They can modify any packets sent from your computer to theirs, insert tracking, or peek at it or whatever. After all, YOU sent the packet to them.

Not to them, but through them.

I'm paying them to take that data, and deliver it verbatim to some other party.

They are reasonably free to refuse to take my money (they may have traded that freedom for some other gain, but then it's a different story), what they can't do is claim they are providing that service, while adulterating my data.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#140

Post by paulmd » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 5:03 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #112

jules wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding the content suffers from a tragedy of the commons problem.

Something rarely discussed is how the cost of publishing the content is imploding. A generation ago it took a real company with full time employees to run Slashdot. In 2014 it took some volunteers and some linode instances to run SoylentNews using slashcode. In another decade you'll have people running things like /. and HN on the equivalent of a raspberry pi drawing 5 watts. A generation ago some cool sites started…

There's value to having someone with a deep understanding of a topic who can follow leads and investigate, construct a narrative out of disparate facts, and then deliver it compellingly. I guess it doesn't have to be a journalist, but you will need those same traits and I don't think that's a particularly common combination without specific cultivation. Clickbait and press releases obviously don't deliver that either, of course.

The hardware to run a site has become much cheaper, but at the end of the day it still takes a lot of hours to produce content and cultivate a community. There's a huge amount of business roles and work that you're glossing over there - from admin to overseeing content production to developer. Peer-moderator type systems like Reddit have lots of issues - even at the best of times they have a bandwagon effect that shouts down statements that are unpopular with the masses, and at worst they are very susceptible to sentiment manipulation like voter rings. I don't doubt there are "viral" marketers that provide social-media promotion services.

I'd also point out that looking at specific examples can be deceptive. Slashdot is late in its life cycle and the community has clearly decayed from its glory days. Digg probably doesn't need as many servers now either. But you'll never run a top-10 website on a Raspberry Pi - or any site whose performance you care about, for that matter.