Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

marco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 249 posts

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#151

Post by fwn »

qopp wrote: post #57

"What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues." -- https://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics.... Kant 1st Imperative -- Violates -- If everyone used Adblock, many websites would shutdown. I.e. "Adblock is…

But all those reflexions on the issue are completely determined by the random assumptions you use in your examples.

Kant 1. Imp: One could deny the disappearance or embrace it. One could see the new forces leading the web away from ads as something beneficial for society as a whole.

Utilitarianism: There are many not quantifyable variables in a possible calculation. Just add seeing ads as exceedingly costly and your utilitarian argument in favour of adblocking is secured. Same goes for rule utilitarianism. E.g. Just measure the overall good generated by websites not by quantity but by quality. Get advertising in your quality metrics as something that reduces quality.

Social Contract: Spin another social contract: Page owners freely upload their pages knowing that the web is pull and users will select the resources displayed. One could argue that forcing them to download ads might violate this social contract.

Virtue Ethics: Alter the individuals opinion on his adblocking behaviour for your model. One could argue that there might be shame for someone not to block ads. (Which is a plausible case for a whole variety of ads out in the web right now.)

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#152

Post by corford »

harryc2011 wrote: post #124
andygates wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an amusing and relatively new third case where you already have bought the product, but ad servers are dumb and will spam you with ads for that product for months, because your trackers said you searched for that product once. It's wasteful, but in an almost ironic novel way.

I wanted to mention this exact thing on one of the threads earlier today but couldn't articulate it properly. In the UK the department stores John Lewis and House of Fraser are both guilty of this - if I browse something on either of their sites an ad for it follows me around the web for ~4 months. E.g. I was buying Birthday gifts for my girlfriend at the beginning of July and looked on both of these sites and they a…

I believe such a thing already exists :) http://imgur.com/p6GD6kD (plus no need for a "need it by date X" feature as these ads don't follow you around everywhere!)

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#153

Post by harryovers »

npkarnik wrote: post #149
harryovers wrote: post #146

People who support ad-blockers and support net neutrality don't seem to see the hypocrisy in their stance. If all net traffic should be treated equal then shouldn't advertising net traffic be treated with the same equality as content net traffic and not blocked by some software running somewhere on that network (even if it is running at your end of the network).

I don't buy the hypocrisy. Net neutrality requires ISP infrastructure companies to not artificially restrict end-users choice for legal content. Especially as ISP companies become coupled with content companies (Comcast/NBC Universal) and generate anti-trust concerns regarding throttling their competitors in the content vertical. An end-user running an ad-blocker has literally nothing to do with the appropriate role…

Net neutrality is about all net traffic being treated equally. It is not just about the ISPs throttling what they want. Ad blockers do not treat all network traffic equally, they will block it if they think it is anything to do with an advertising company.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#155

Post by npkarnik »

harryovers wrote: post #153
npkarnik wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the hypocrisy. Net neutrality requires ISP infrastructure companies to not artificially restrict end-users choice for legal content. Especially as ISP companies become coupled with content companies (Comcast/NBC Universal) and generate anti-trust concerns regarding throttling their competitors in the content vertical. An end-user running an ad-blocker has literally nothing to do with the appropriate role…

Net neutrality is about all net traffic being treated equally. It is not just about the ISPs throttling what they want. Ad blockers do not treat all network traffic equally, they will block it if they think it is anything to do with an advertising company.

Every source I've read disagrees with your interpretation. Net neutrality is about common carrier rules and definitely relates to how ISPs and Governments handle traffic.

Here's an article by Tim Wu, who coined the term explaining that he is specifically talking about public network neutrality and common carrier laws: http://www.timwu.org/network_neutrality.html

Also, https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#156

Post by [deleted] »

drdaeman wrote: post #78

I wonder, what opponents of ad-blocking think about email spam? Is it different if spam ads are injected by email client? (some email and even messaging apps do this -- not to the actual mailbox, of course, but to the displayed inbox contents)

[deleted]

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#157

Post by minimuffins »

"Ads help us to be more informed about what products are available to us" (paraphrasing)

A kind public service! We should really be paying them, but the advertisers inform us for free!

Asking about the ethics of hiding ads seems a little like asking about the ethics of taking shelter during a carpet bombing attack.

I wish we would steer these discussions away from economics (Do the ads work? Are there better ways to monetize, do they stabilize or destabilize markets, etc) and toward culture. What is the cultural effect of saturating the internet (and the rest of the world for that matter) with ads? I am not the first person to ask...

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#158

Post by PeterisP »

harryovers wrote: post #153
npkarnik wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the hypocrisy. Net neutrality requires ISP infrastructure companies to not artificially restrict end-users choice for legal content. Especially as ISP companies become coupled with content companies (Comcast/NBC Universal) and generate anti-trust concerns regarding throttling their competitors in the content vertical. An end-user running an ad-blocker has literally nothing to do with the appropriate role…

Net neutrality is about all net traffic being treated equally. It is not just about the ISPs throttling what they want. Ad blockers do not treat all network traffic equally, they will block it if they think it is anything to do with an advertising company.

Net neutrality is about third parties treating all net traffic equally.

I am not treating all net traffic equally, I'm not visiting at least 99.99% of global websites - and that is perfectly consistent with net neutrality.

In that sense, an ad blocking or extra-ad-adding service that is implemented against my wishes by any third party (no matter if it's ISP, software vendor or someone who hacked my computer) violates that neutrality, but the exact same ad blocking or ad adding done by me or the content provider is acceptable.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#159

Post by tbirdz »

unprepare wrote: post #109
reasonishy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Advertising is the method most people use to discover new products/services. Do you have a source for that? >How would you know there's a star wars movie coming out? By being interested in science fiction movies, being part of a community of people with like interests, theater showtimes, etc. Why do i need to know 6 months beforehand that a star wars movie will eventually come out? Why would i need to know any soone…

Personally, I had never heard of Kiehls, Spanx, Lululemon, Zara, Jiffy muffin mix, or NO-AD sunscreen. However, I don't know if advertising would help me remember these brands better, as I don't buy their class of products often.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#160

Post by flavor8 »

zokier wrote: post #105
jpmattia wrote: post #12

I'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…

Do you also think that selling movies is broken business model because movies can pirated trivially? Or that free software is broken model because GPL can be violated trivially?

In both of your example cases, there are actual legal protections. In the case of a content farm, they're making content available for _free_ without a terms of service in the hope that people visiting them won't be blocking the ads they're also serving. Show me the content farm that makes users agree to a terms of service requiring ad viewing, and then your examples make sense.
Post reply on HN