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The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

bloomberg.com

211–220 of 299 posts

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#211
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no requirement in social contract that you have to obey anything another person says, just because they said it. On the contrary, social contract has it that whether an exchange is a gift or a business transaction must be defined before the exchange happens.

Yes, of course. In the example I assumed the terms were laid out beforehand.

It's important to make that assumption explicit, because the current situation on the web is that sites do not lay the terms out beforehand, do not demand an informed consent, and then proceed to complain people use the web the way it was intended to use (according to web protocols).

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#212
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're different because in the scarf example, you're expressing the expectation before giving the scarf. In the web example, the expectation is applied retroactively. It's as if you gave me the scarf, no strings attached, and later said "oh, since I gave you that scarf, I also want you to go to the store and pick up some cough medicine for me". I'm glad we've come to agreement, then :). I agree, if the expectatio…

Yes, that I agree with. EDIT: maybe not 100% agree, because I'm not confident that "stealing" is the right word. The concept of theft carries extra connotations and constraints with it, and I'm too tired today to go into exploring this. But I definitely agree that if you consented to a contract and then proceeded to break it, then you're both morally in the wrong, and liable for any consequences that can be legally e…

> Also, out of curiosity, looking at all your comments in this thread - is all this discussion a one big exercise at applying stuff from Scott Alexander's "Varieties of Argumentative Experience"? ;).

Haha, well, I did say this in the discord channel I share with some friends about an hour ago:

> whew boys, i'm arguing on like 87 fronts on hn simultaneously

> rly stirred up a hornets nest

> told them using ad blockers was stealing

> not even sure if i believe it, but makes for a good tussle

And I am also a pretty religious reader of slate star codex :).

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, associating blocking ads as something akin to stealing is morally bankrupt. It's an incredibly slippery slope that leads to complete loss of autonomy for individuals. If I refuse to read roadside billboards, am I now stealing? If I tear up newspaper ads and throw them away, am I now stealing? If I turn off my tv during ads on a cable show, am I now stealing? I think any sane person would definitively say…

In all of those cases you're paying elsewhere for the service. In the case of web ads, you're not usually paying for the content, and so they're expecting you to see the ads. I don't know why people go to websites to read their content for free while block their ads. To me that just says "I am consuming too much shit." You don't HAVE to go to these websites and consume everything in the world, you know? Life will go…

[deleted]

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#214
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand you to be suggesting that it's like as if you went to a restaurant whose terms were that you must eat the food you're served -- force fed -- and that if "you don't like those terms, you shouldn't have come to this restaurant". However, these terms are not disclosed until you visit. Is that the position you're trying to advance?

Close. I believe that uninformed consent is not consent. In order to meaningfully enter any agreement both parties must understand what they're agreeing to. However, what that means is that a website ought to have the right to put up a page that says "Hey, if you want to proceed and view our content, we require that you turn off ad blockers. If you don't, then please do not view our content", and that to proceed anyw…

> If a restaurant says to you when you arrive "If you want to eat here, you must eat the food you're served, force fed. Do you still want to eat here?" And then you say "Yes", then yes, you are obligated to abide their terms.

I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

They can require you to pay for the meal if you don't eat all of it. They can't legally force you to eat the food.

If a website poses an interstitial that says "To access this content you must agree to disable your ad-blockers or purchase a subscriptions." and you click "agree" but do not disable ad-blockers or subscribe, then you have a point. However, you are in breach of contract, and there is still no theft.

However, the agreement MUST be explicitly agreed to. If another visitor clicks a link that goes straight to the content, they are not in breach of contract because they did not explicitly agree.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#215
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can get to it without passing through a gate (login) then yes, it is a public area. Content creators should put up a wall and gate (require someone to pay money to view the content) if they want their content to not be public.

Does a "check this box to agree to the terms" constitute a wall?

That would be an explicit agreement to a contract and there are still a large number of restrictions as to what a TOS can require from you.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#216
post #39

> Only a few years ago, even people who hated ads saw ad-blocking software as akin to stealing. I've been using ad blockers and NoScript plugins for longer than I can remember. Before that I was using /etc/hosts file based blocking. I've never felt like I was stealing nor do I know anyone that feels that way. On the contrary, I've always felt that content to display, and in particular code to execute, on my device is…

I feel compelled to write a reply just so there's a record on the internet in an archive somewhere of how history actually was.

Its like industry is trying to actively change history.

Practically no one saw or has seen ad-blocking as akin to stealing. This is a line completely made up by the advertising industry to try to co-opt a publicly available communication and content publishing system that existed and was being heavily used BEFORE advertising was prevalent.

Advertisers came along and polluted the internet after the internet was being used and free content was already being posted.

Ad-blocking arose as an organic and natural reaction to advertisers beginning to appear and moving onto the free internet, not internet denizens thinking/conspiring to get their hands on the sweet juicy content of advertisers and trying to fight their way into the advertisers domain.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#217
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with you on quite a few different levels and, for clarity, I'll attempt to separate them out in this reply. First of all, you've completely conflated the distinction between legal and moral obligations. Your entire argument in this post is a legal argument, from which you jump to an entirely unfounded moral assertion. Even if I agreed with your legal argument, which I don't, the moral conclusion would not…

I mostly agree with you. I'm not making arguments about the behavior of most websites - i'm taking a more abstract perspective. > and the legal argument had nothing to do with the ability of your average web surfer, but rather the lack of constructive notice on the part of the website Indeed, I also do not consider websites without constructive notice to have legally binding terms. I'm referring specifically to cases…

Okay, so you agree that in the absolute majority of cases users have no legal obligation whatsoever to watch ads, but you're interested in a hypothetical website that has constructive notice for terms of service that specifically include language which says users must watch ads. All right, let's discuss that.

In this case, even though the contract itself is enforcable, it does not necessarily follow that every clause is enforcable. Standard unilateral contract law restrictions apply. To the best of my knowledge, no comparable clause has ever been directly tested in a U.S. court, so we'll have to speculate. However, it is well established that certain types of clauses are invalid for reasons such as being unconscionable (compulsory arbitration clauses are a common example). The extent to which a website's terms of service can restrict your legal right to not download certain network packets or adjust how your browser interprets them is an open legal question, at least in the U.S. (I'm confident no such ToS would be upheld in the ECJ).

Furthermore, if we lived in the (in my opinion, dystopian) world you envision, what happens if due to, for instance, an ISP routing issue the third party advertisements you've "agreed to" aren't loaded onto your computer? Are you in breach of contract? And this is not even touching upon the question of whether a "legal obligation to watch" the content your browser actually displays in the end makes any sense (I don't really see how it could).

Also, while this is an amusing legal question to ponder, I continue to hold that the finer points of contract law in a particular jurisdiction don't really serve to illuminate any underlying moral questions.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#218
post #155
post #39

> Only a few years ago, even people who hated ads saw ad-blocking software as akin to stealing. I've been using ad blockers and NoScript plugins for longer than I can remember. Before that I was using /etc/hosts file based blocking. I've never felt like I was stealing nor do I know anyone that feels that way. On the contrary, I've always felt that content to display, and in particular code to execute, on my device is…

The only reason we have free online content to consume is because content creators expect to be reimbursed through ads. When I block ads I am free-riding off of people that don't. Whether this is stealing or not is semantics, and I don't care to get into that discussion. But I do see a moral problem here. I personally do block most ads, which is kind of justifiable to me because of malware concerns, but I'm not going…

There's just one little problem with your theory, which happens to be the factual accuracy.

Free online content was around before the ads were :\

Certain KINDS of online content will go away without advertising, but when you look at a great deal of that online content, I think there's at least a debatable moral argument to be made that the moral position is that it should be gotten rid of.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#219
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that I agree with. EDIT: maybe not 100% agree, because I'm not confident that "stealing" is the right word. The concept of theft carries extra connotations and constraints with it, and I'm too tired today to go into exploring this. But I definitely agree that if you consented to a contract and then proceeded to break it, then you're both morally in the wrong, and liable for any consequences that can be legally e…

> Also, out of curiosity, looking at all your comments in this thread - is all this discussion a one big exercise at applying stuff from Scott Alexander's "Varieties of Argumentative Experience"? ;). Haha, well, I did say this in the discord channel I share with some friends about an hour ago: > whew boys, i'm arguing on like 87 fronts on hn simultaneously > rly stirred up a hornets nest > told them using ad blockers…

Hah :).

> And I am also a pretty religious reader of slate star codex :).

So am I!

> > not even sure if i believe it, but makes for a good tussle

So are you now more, or less sure if you believe it?

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just install nginx that answers to http and https and return empty gif or 204.

Would that fail because your sever can't provide the right cert? You'd probably have to install a custom root certificate on your machines that you https ad blocker could use to forge certs.

Yes, custom cert has to be used, otherwise browsing could be very annoying.
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