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

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#181

Post by maxerickson » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #178

ryandvm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that nobody is asking the actual market value of their product. TechCrunch would probably want subscribers to pay north of $5/month. But the actual marketing value (in ad revenue) that they are currently able to extract from a single reader is probably closer to $0.50/year - if that. You solve the micropayment problem and then we can talk about what I'm willing to pay for content.

Mozilla Research put the entire web's advertising revenue at $12.70/month per user[1]. In other words, if they are right we are living with the consequences of advertising for a mere $13/month, $13 dollar they still get from us anyway because it's baked into the prices of the advertised products. > You solve the micropayment problem We hackers and technologists here at HN are the "You". "The best minds of my generati…

Why assume there would be less overhead without the ads?

With ads, there is also probably less friction visiting unknown sites; clicking to a site with too many ads and then just closing it is probably a better experience than knowing you blew $0.05 on crap content (I'm not saying getting frustrated about $0.05 makes sense, I'm saying it will probably happen).

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#182

Post by h3st » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

bediger4000 wrote: post #101

netrus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you got the car for free, because the manufacturer wants people to see you driving it? Sounds unethical to me.

That's quite a bit different - there's probably a contractual (legal) obligation there. I use my bandwidth to retrieve the web page, and my CPU/GPU time to render it. Arguably, my computer is doing some of the work for the "content creator" in any case. If we're going the Car Analogy Route, then I think the situation is more like you've bought some blueprints and chunks of metal. You machined the chunks of metal into…

The assembly / bandwidth / cpu / etc argument really shines for limited platforms. E.g. if you're on metered internet, loading ads costs you money. If you're on a small device, playing ads costs you power, meaning you have to find a charger sooner.

Computer ads aren't free for the people subjected to them, since we're the ones that have to do the work of displaying them. Compare that to paper / magazine ads add a few grams of weight and a bit of volume, but rarely in noticeable amounts, and billboard ads that don't cost the recipient any resources by being there (except maybe having to step around them).

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#183

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #178

ryandvm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that nobody is asking the actual market value of their product. TechCrunch would probably want subscribers to pay north of $5/month. But the actual marketing value (in ad revenue) that they are currently able to extract from a single reader is probably closer to $0.50/year - if that. You solve the micropayment problem and then we can talk about what I'm willing to pay for content.

Mozilla Research put the entire web's advertising revenue at $12.70/month per user[1]. In other words, if they are right we are living with the consequences of advertising for a mere $13/month, $13 dollar they still get from us anyway because it's baked into the prices of the advertised products. > You solve the micropayment problem We hackers and technologists here at HN are the "You". "The best minds of my generati…

> Mozilla Research puts the entire web's advertising revenue at $12.70/month per users[1]. This means that is the most we'd have to pay on average if could just pay directly (and in fact less if because all the overhead and externalities go away).

Direct payments have overhead and externalities (aide from simply payment processing overhad, consider that instead of providing content to all comers with accompanying ads, content providers have to have paywalls -- to stop the content from getting taken for free -- and find some way of promoting content to those who haven't yet paid to convince them to pay for it.) Neither the paywalls nor the promotional efforts are free of cost.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#184

Post by codezero » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

andygates wrote: post #87

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.

I would expect to see a code snippet on host sites which does a bit of pass-through disguising, so that what used to be "iframe src=skeezy_virus_mill.ru" looks local. That seems consistent with the arms race in progress...

Some sites do this already. Either with a locally hosted snippet or by doing a CNAME in their DNS that points to the third party so it looks like it's from the same domain.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#185

Post by mercer » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #118

loco5niner wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Most of us live in market economies. Jobs which are truly considered to be important have respect and pay well. In contrast, in the U.S. we don't even respect mothers enough to e.g. give them enough time to fully recover from giving birth before going back to work or ensure that nobody has to worry about losing their job or income if they take a sick kid to the doctor.

Man, I don't want to derail this conversation, but I have so many feelings about this issue. And they often conflict.

As someone raised in a very traditional religious environment, I am not a big fan of the market economy approach of quantifying and anonymizing roles (including that of my local grocer or 'fishmonger', to name an example).

But on the other hand, we live where we live, and in this world I figure if we don't respect mothers because their role is difficult to express in money, we should at the very least fix that and give them all the support they need, monetary, paid leave, or otherwise.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#186

Post by kstrauser » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

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).

It's hard to reply without sarcasm, but I'll try.

I 100% support the right of advertisers' content to be handled with the same diligence and priority as any other source on the Internet, without blocking or throttling at the ISP layer.

I 100% support my right to choose, filter, and select what legally-entitled content I download from the Internet, using whatever mechanism I see fit. If a page redirects me to a freely distributable copy of "Pixels", I'm not going to use my network resources to fetch it just because I can. That content doesn't interest me and I don't want it. Well, same with invasive advertising: I wish not to use my paid network resources to download it.

Your statement is the equivalent of "how can you support telephone companies acting as common carriers, but still think it's OK to hang up on telemarketers?" It's a non-sequitur.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#187

Post by zzalpha » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #145

zzalpha wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something rarely discussed is how the cost of publishing the content is imploding. You are aware that content generation isn't, in fact, a technological problem, right? You still need folks to write the copy, edit, research and fact check, moderate discussion forums, etc. Yes, the cost of the actual physical act of publishing copy has gotten cheaper. But high quality journalism costs money. That's unavoidable. I'm no…

I don't disagree with anything you write in detail, in fact I think we agree that due to a massive mismatch in supply and demand, until about 99% of existing journalism is culled, nobody is going to make any money in journalism. Maybe a good analogy is the village blacksmith is hurt and angry that he hung up advertisements on his shop wall, but nobody looks at them, and they're all going to be really sorry when there…

And my point is something like if you "need" something horseshoe shaped for crafty project or whatever, now a days you download a .scad from thingiverse, run it thru openscad, run the .stl thru curaengine to get a .gcode, then feed the .gcode to octopi on your printer and pick up your shoe in a couple hours at a cost of about fifty cents of filament.

You can't possibly be equating the manufacture of a simple physical metal object, something easily automated, and arguably of little valuable in a modern setting, with the creation of high quality, researched journalism, intended to inform the public.

Can you?

I mean, if you think that metaphor is at all appropriate, you've completely missed the point. Of both my own post, and of journalism in general.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#188

Post by alkonaut » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

codezero wrote: post #137

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.

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 provide…

Ads and reliable counting should be possible to provide from the content providers site. Tracking/identification is optional. The question is just: if it's the only choice available, would advertisers want to pay for non-individualized ads being shown to all visitors, without any chance of click-through counts?

My guess is: initially no. But eventually? Why not? All we did then was turn web advertising into what it was from the beginning - print ads on a screen.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#189

Post by eevilspock » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:52 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #181

eevilspock wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla Research put the entire web's advertising revenue at $12.70/month per user[1]. In other words, if they are right we are living with the consequences of advertising for a mere $13/month, $13 dollar they still get from us anyway because it's baked into the prices of the advertised products. > You solve the micropayment problem We hackers and technologists here at HN are the "You". "The best minds of my generati…

Why assume there would be less overhead without the ads? With ads, there is also probably less friction visiting unknown sites; clicking to a site with too many ads and then just closing it is probably a better experience than knowing you blew $0.05 on crap content (I'm not saying getting frustrated about $0.05 makes sense, I'm saying it will probably happen).

You and dragonwriter are missing my point about innovation, and also greatly underestimate the overhead cost of the advertising-publisher industrial complex.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#190

Post by danielweber » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 6:57 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #136

danielweber wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are lots of things where "someone wants to provide X" and "someone wants to consume X" and even if they could agree on cost, they can't, because market failure.

"The market will figure it out" isn't something handed down from God. I've observed industry segments get drained because someone tried to give away the product, driving all other players out of the market, and then the one remaining player was unable to support themselves because their customers had been trained to get it for free.