Nowdays content is there for the sake of the ad.
Nowdays the content in many cases is an ad.
Block that...
The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
31–40 of 249 posts
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, so the equivalent would be this: I buy magazines from the wholesaler. I rip out all the adverts. I then sell them to the public. I'm acting as a lovely "ad-blocker" for magazines. Is what I'm doing legal or ethical? Another argument would be is it ethical to block people who have adblock installed. In such an arms race, who will win?
I don't think that analogy holds up, since the viewer of a web page is not reselling the content (which would be the unethical part). It would be more accurate to ask whether removing the ad pages in magazines you keep for your own use was ethical. The obvious answer would be: of course.
It's even ok to hire someone to rip the ads out for you beforehand.
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#33How 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…
OK, so the equivalent would be this: I buy magazines from the wholesaler. I rip out all the adverts. I then sell them to the public. I'm acting as a lovely "ad-blocker" for magazines. Is what I'm doing legal or ethical? Another argument would be is it ethical to block people who have adblock installed. In such an arms race, who will win?
As someone who uses ad-blockers, I am totally fine with sites blocking me for it. I will disable adblock for that site if I really value the content. Otherwise it makes it really easy for me to decide to never go back to a site again.
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#34I'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…
Similarly, I've wondered why advertisers don't just change how they do the ads: if the ads are non-standard size, are non animated, and link back to a legit landing page from non/shady domain, what adblocker covers that? Wouldn't that just look like ordinary site content? Or do they really update them that quickly and narrowly?
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#35How 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…
Do you really believe that the only reason "it's my car and I can run over whoever I like" is ethically wrong is because there's a law that says you can't run over people?
No, but it's my car so I can take off all the manufacturer and dealer badges.
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#36It 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.
newspapers and magazines have always had advertisements
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#37What 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…
>If these costs are being borne evenly, then it's complete societal waste. We could pay X for the content, and not incur the overhead. If these costs are not borne evenly, and some people are paying for the consumption of more disciplined people, it's probably contributing to terrible cycles of poverty (ie: some kid spending money on fancy new shoes he doesn't need and can't afford is paying for a well-paid tech-user…
Who pays the costs in lost efficiency, lost productivity, lost time etc for readers to wade through ads to get to content?
Saying something "lowers costs" without considering ALL costs involved is lazy.
Most smart consumers are much less interested in what a company has to say about its own products (embellishment) than about what other people say.
So yeah, advertising is pretty terrible.
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#38Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#39What 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 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…
I don't need to know there's a new Star Wars movie coming out.
Scarcity seems to breed innovation, so maybe cutting the cord and creating a financial incentive will have some brilliant people come up with better models than I can for free on my spare time.
Maybe after a period of downtime, we'll all reminisce about the good old days and vote in some kind of universal internet-real-estate tax, allowing people to pledge bandwidth to people whose content they enjoy to aid in its dissemination, on a "one-person-one-attention-unit" basis. Who even knows?
Re: The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
#40What 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 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…
A contrary (and more accurate view) is that advertising suggests things that people don't really need.
Here's a "magical alternative": if you make something the least bit good/useful, people don'e need to be beat over the head with it - they'll find it.
Advertising is vapid, inaccurate, and a blight.