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The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

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Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#221

Post by daviross »

qopp wrote: post #218
daviross wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone used Adblock, many websites would shutdown. - Fails to make the claim that many (but not all) websites shutting down would be bad. Kant's 2nd Imperative - Passes. It treats them as ends in and of themselves by focusing on the content they wish to present to me rather than lies which they don't control. Utilitarianism - Impossible to come to agreement on. We could heap on whatever costs/benefits we want on…

(Fails to make the claim that many (but not all) websites shutting ) -- Not the intended claim. Kants 1 deals with "universalizability principle" (See other comment) Kant's 2nd Imperative -- Incorrect perspective. Analyzing whether adding ads to your site isn't the question we are analyzing here (that might also be unethical). Blocking ads is what we are looking at. Utilitarianism -- Incorrect perspective. Analyzing…

Fine, fine.

Kant's 1st Imperative -- Back to universalizability: If everybody used Adblock, then many sites would shut down. That's universalizable. In fact, I'm encouraging the universalizing of this one, rather than what you're assuming, which is that I'm hiding within "It's alright if I do it, so long as the bulk of traffic doesn't".

Kant's 2nd Imperative -- Blocking ads is the outcry, then. They have the basis of free rational action to provide an ad, I have the basis of free rational action to decide whether to view it.

Utilitarianism -- Blocking ads downside: Less economic churn (might be positive). Blocking ads upside: Reduces malware vectors, thus decreasing the chance of malware targeting nuclear facilities spreading and leading to nuclear annihilation of the planet. Given the infinite magnitude of harm, even the most improbable odds outweigh. ((Seriously, trying to actually calculate utilitarian probability is a fool's errand.))

Rule Utilitarianism - I reject that your proposed rules lead to the greatest good. Alternate rule: Permitting malware vectors to run is harmful, thus blocking malware vectors is positively ethical.

Social Contract -- Websites provide open streams of information without negotiating terms. This might apply to "Wait X seconds before seeing your content" type ads, I'll concede that.

Virtue Ethics -- You might feel shame for supporting ad-based revenue systems. (Seriously. No shame here. I'll tell you to your face that I block ads. If you proceed to block me, that's entirely fair. At which point I can decide whether I think it's worth viewing ads for one time to see the content.)

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#222

Post by Merovius »

jacquesm wrote: post #217
Merovius wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been tracking this debate (or, until recently, lack thereof) for years and no one is articulating this well, myself included. Specifically, no one is articulating how this doesn't even make sense from an economics perspective. That sounds like very bad economics. Because a) Either the spending power of the population is constant. In that case, there is no cost (for consumers), because they don't spend more , t…

The reasoning goes (and I have absolutely no idea if there is an element of truth to this or not so don't hold this against me) that advertising increases the velocity of the total amount spent and as such can actually increase the size of the total economy. So even if people do not insanely accumulate wealth it does leave their pockets faster essentially causing a decrease in total savings.

> So even if people do not insanely accumulate wealth it does leave their pockets faster essentially causing a decrease in total savings.

That argument doesn't sound right to me. From an a priori standpoint (and I am happy to accept a posteriori arguments, i.e. studies), people will on average invest a fixed percentage of their income into long-term savings (i.e. pension) and the rest on various goods. I read your "people do not accumulate wealth" as a general agreement to that premise. But if that's the case, then there really is nothing bad going on here. Your total spending power is independent of whether you buy one large good A, or instead a series of smaller goods B that sum to A.

The latter is, what I interpret as your "increase in velocity of spending". But that has no negative impact on you as a customer, whereas it is good for the economy, no? Because money that is churned in the economic cycle produces wealth, whereas money standing still doesn't.

And that's what I mean by my alternatives: Either my premise is true, in which case your total spending power won't really change and advertising only redistributes this spending power amongst several competing companies. Or my premise is false, in which case advertising would cause us to sacrifice long-term savings in pensions for short term satisfaction for buying goods (which might be bad).

But I see no reason, a priori, why that premise should be false. It actually sounds pretty ridiculous to me, tbh.

Overall, my (very limited) understanding of economics for this problem is based on two rough fundamental principles: a) The amount of value (≈ money after accounting for inflation) in the economy is more or less constant (i.e. people have more or less "money you need to afford food and shelter"xC, where C is a constant). And b) Money produces wealth, when it is spent (i.e. is exchanged for goods).

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#223

Post by zzalpha »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #219
zzalpha wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could twitter and random blogs have stopped Vietnam and Nixon too, if they had existed back then? Go read about Watergate and get back to me (though, ironically, to do that you would need to read the works of investigative journalists...). Today, the equivalent to Deep Throat might be Snowden, and that, too, required journalists like those from The Guardian to get the story out. That kind of journalism requires res…

Could the reduced effectiveness of journalism be because the government has journalists too? I saw lots of journalists in favor of the war in Iraq. Were there many journalists in favor of war in Vietnam too? I have only seen journalists as they were already declining, but we saw the decline of independent bloggers as it happened. What happened to amateur Internet journalism was not a market failure. It was the govern…

I saw lots of journalists in favor of the war in Iraq. Were there many journalists in favor of war in Vietnam too?

Of course. And just like the Iraq war, the government used control of information (like trying to suppress publication of the Pentagon Papers) to attempt to maintain support among both journalists and the public.

Fortunately, with a strong journalistic community, combined with the constitution and the supreme court, the government lost. But it took time and significant resources.

Could something similar have happened to real journalism too?

Eh, journalism has always had to fight against the corrupting forces of propagandists. That's nothing new.

The difference is, a large news organization has the time and resources to fight that corruption, while a small time blogger does not.

Of course, where bloggers win is in the sheer distributed nature of their operation. That is, it's a very different thing to muzzle/corrupt a million bloggers versus a dozen newspapers.

So there are pros and cons to both models. But I think there are things traditional news sources can do that bloggers/etc simply can't. And the converse is also obviously true.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#224

Post by Balgair »

flavor8 wrote: post #164
Balgair wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.artofmanliness.com/ This site is a great one to look at in terms of the ad ecosystem. The ads are (typically) not that bad and very targeted, and the content is fantastic to the sub-genre of people looking at it. The admin there uses, reviews, and runs give-aways for products he actually likes and wants to advocate for. True, the site is never going to make billions or even millioons, but it is enough for…

People subscribe to podcasts. Why couldn't people subscribe to his site (for a trivially small payment) and get access to one new article per week? (Or access to 50 articles for a set period of time.) If the content is good, then people will be willing to pay for it. That's how books work. That's how, for example, wikipedia works. That's how newspapers work (although of course many have been failing).

I'm not saying the site is perfect, rather, a more appropriate use of ads and how they are displayed. This is to counter the auto-playing pop-ups you can never seem to exit from and only mis-click on.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#225

Post by teaneedz »

eevilspock wrote: post #125
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…

Dude, I've been trying to spread this exact understanding on HN for years[1]. You would think that this crowd would get that there is no free lunch. But cognitive dissonance is powerful: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair I've been tracking this debate (or, until recently, lack thereof) for years and no one is articulating thi…

Yeah it's a really simple argument that many choose not to understand. The more ad blocking the better until Advertisers and Publishers come to grasp wit UX. I'm quite tired of the tracking and bandwidth today's ads consume. Looking very forward to iOS9.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#226

Post by loco5niner »

RodericDay wrote: post #134
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.

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

Sure he his. She's a stay-at-home mom. Whose paycheck bought the house, etc? His.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#227

Post by loco5niner »

Merovius wrote: post #208
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.

I think what they meant was "This job is important. So we should pay it accordingly. It is kind of hollow claiming that a job is important, but at the same time not paying it".

Yep, I get that's what was meant. It's just not logically sound.

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#228

Post by loco5niner »

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.

> Jobs which are truly considered to be important have respect and pay well

Correction: Jobs that return a very positive cash flow (for someone) pay well. (Teachers, Cops, Firefighters vs Brokers, Singers, Pro Athletes)

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#229

Post by lucb1e »

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…

> 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.

Uhm, no, you could say that about a million things to dismiss it as unimportant and "just do it".

Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

#230

Post by scarface74 »

eevilspock wrote: post #125
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…

Dude, I've been trying to spread this exact understanding on HN for years[1]. You would think that this crowd would get that there is no free lunch. But cognitive dissonance is powerful: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair I've been tracking this debate (or, until recently, lack thereof) for years and no one is articulating thi…

Well yes he does make most of his current income from ads - mostly from his podcast. But he made most of his wealth from his equity in Tumblr as the first developer. He also sold Instsgram to another company and makes money from the OverCast app.
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