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Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk

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Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#71

Post by concinds »

actionfromafar wrote: post #48
concinds wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB said in SEC filings that many young people lie about their age when signing up; independent research I've found confirms that FB uses self-reported age for ad targeting ( https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2021-006.pdf ). British authorities say more than 80% of children lie about their age ( https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jul/26/children-lie-a... ). More search shows that parents often encourage…

Employees seldom are evil cartoon characters. Banality of evil, and all that. It's the system as setup which is the problem. When faced with such a hard problem, there are basically two outcomes: - oh well, carry on then - maybe we shouldn't be doing these things, and make a drastic change? I know, the second option is almost laughably absurd.

That's fair, and there's certainly tons of incentives to ignore problems; office politics, liability (because if a company is "internally aware" of a problem, that's a huge liability for lawsuits and regulation), etc.

But I'd give a lot to see a reality TV show where people who constantly criticise big corporations are put in charge of the relevant team for a year (people here being put in charge of FB's ads team; people who want headphone jacks being put in charge of the iPhone hardware design team and having to deal with the tradeoffs) and see how "easy" a problem is to solve. Though them running these companies to the ground might be the goal after all.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#72

Post by mcv »

IvanK_net wrote: post #39

It is okay because website creators tolerate it. Once all website owners stop tolerating it, everybody would have to watch ads. Just like if at the grocery store, you could choose to pay or not pay. It would be totally okay not to pay. But if the number of non-paying customers grew too much, the owners would make it mandatory to pay. This did not happen to the web yet.

> Once all website owners stop tolerating it, everybody would have to watch ads.

Or everybody would stop visiting corporate websites and we'd go back to the user-generated web of old, where people created stuff out of love, instead of to get views and sell ads.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#73

Post by trey-jones »

IvanK_net wrote: post #39

It is okay because website creators tolerate it. Once all website owners stop tolerating it, everybody would have to watch ads. Just like if at the grocery store, you could choose to pay or not pay. It would be totally okay not to pay. But if the number of non-paying customers grew too much, the owners would make it mandatory to pay. This did not happen to the web yet.

So much of the economy of the web is built upon advertising, a tedious way of paying that becomes more costly as your time becomes more valuable. It's so tedious and costly that there are legions of people building products to bypass this payment and giving it away for free. Does this sound like a healthy economy?

Not only is the foundation weak, but the advertisers themselves are really, really poor at actually delivering relevant advertising. If 25% of every ad that I saw led me to a product that made my life genuinely easier and/or more enjoyable, I wouldn't mind seeing them, would I? Instead I most prominently see ads for a product or service that I've just paid for, or their competition. Too late? With all the money being spent on marketing I'm disappointed they can't do better.

And worse still, there are people (and machines) flooding what was once a useful internet full of knowledge with worse copies of that knowledge, sometimes algorithmically scrambled and riddled with affiliate links. Too much information! Some good and some very bad. We're in a bad state, and advertising has a lot to do with it, in my opinion.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#74

Post by jefftk »

krageon wrote: post #54
throwaway22032 wrote: post #42

I find the idea that anyone, a single person, could consider blocking ads to be wrong to be hilarious. I've never met such a person. I can only imagine them to be barely human. What other bizarre opinions, internal or external, would they have? I don't think that I could trust them with literally anything.

> What other bizarre opinions, internal or external, would they have? From experience: When your government spies on you and locks folks up without due process, this is good because it keeps the children safe. And a host of other convictions that are so toxic I cannot say them online without feeling dirty. These are the kind of people that say "think of the children" without irony, that view the world in purely adver…

> When your government spies on you and locks folks up without due process, this is good because it keeps the children safe. And a host of other convictions that are so toxic I cannot say them online without feeling dirty. These are the kind of people that say "think of the children" without irony, that view the world in purely adversarial terms and do their best to hate as many things as they can. They live to make everyone around them miserable.

FWIW, I am against dragnet surveillance, in favor of due process, doubt I've ever said "think of the children" without irony, don't view the world in adversarial terms, enjoy looking for the positive aspects of things other people malign, and don't want anyone to be miserable.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#76

Post by mcv »

jefftk wrote: post #45

If enough of us used ad blockers, it could help force a systemic shift away from the attention economy altogether It's worth putting serious thought into whether this would actually be a better web; I think it would likely be worse. Most sites today are supported by ads, and if that weren't an option we'd see some combination of paywalls, sponsored content, and sites shutting down. (I used to work on ads)

That doesn't have to be bad at all. Most sites may be supported by ads, but most sites are also crap. This might clean a lot of low-quality distraction from the web and get us back to websites that are about stuff that people love or care about, which is already what the best websites are.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#77

Post by bdefore »

Aside from the well written article itself, it's remarkable the thought and time put into the commentary that follows. This reminds me how much the quality of commentary has reduced on most places that use them. As well as how much effort I put in to contribute. Valuable discussion used to be scattered across various blogs and HN is in some ways the last vestiges of it.

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#78

Post by Hamcha »

jefftk wrote: post #45

If enough of us used ad blockers, it could help force a systemic shift away from the attention economy altogether It's worth putting serious thought into whether this would actually be a better web; I think it would likely be worse. Most sites today are supported by ads, and if that weren't an option we'd see some combination of paywalls, sponsored content, and sites shutting down. (I used to work on ads)

I feel anyone who drives enough traffic to get consistent and valuable ad paychecks could just as well make exclusive paywalled content through Patreon and whatnot. If you can convince 0.1% of your viewership to fork over 1$/mo, wouldn't that match or exceed what you'd get from ads anyway? Of course this system doesn't benefit the many websites that rely on clickbait and quantity>quality content (since they are direct consequences of how the ad market works), but would anyone miss those?

Re: Why It’s OK to Block Ads (2015)

#79

Post by jefftk »

jgilias wrote: post #55
jefftk wrote: post #45

If enough of us used ad blockers, it could help force a systemic shift away from the attention economy altogether It's worth putting serious thought into whether this would actually be a better web; I think it would likely be worse. Most sites today are supported by ads, and if that weren't an option we'd see some combination of paywalls, sponsored content, and sites shutting down. (I used to work on ads)

I really like the solution put forth by Brave. Basically reify the attention economy and make it explicit so that you, as the producer of your attention get a say and a monetary stake in it.

If you think the attention economy is legitimate, a browser that removes the ads publishers have put on their sites and instead serves different ads to the users is pretty shady.
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