I will remove ads whenever it is technically feasible to do so. If it's not technically feasible to do so, then I'll avoid the ads by simply not engaging with the content at all. There are no circumstances where I find media existing with ads to be superior to the media not existing, so if ad blocking were to kill radio, then I'm perfectly fine with that.
I think your perceptions of other people, what you think they think, are misguided.
I block ads and flash because I find ads distracting, animated ads in particular. When web sites use interstitial ads before content comes up (such as javascript popups, or delayed redirects) - I normally close the page and don't bother with the content. The fact that you don't find ads distracting is not proof that I don't find ads distracting. I have the same feelings towards TV; so I don't own one. I have similar feelings towards radio; so the ones I own are multi-purpose devices, like my phone or alarm clock, and are not used for radio listening. I have similar feelings towards magazines; I don't buy them. I have similar feelings about going to the cinema, so I always turn up late to avoid ads, especially trailers, which almost invariably ruin the film before it can be seen with fresh eyes.
Now this has nothing to do with "obligation". Me having my attention degraded by advertising, my focus and concentration broken, is harmful to my being. I resent it, and I would resent the products presented in such a manner, in just the same way as I never buy products from door to door salesmen. I actively seek to avoid those products that were presented persistently enough to lodge in my mind. If anything, I'm doing the advertiser a service by preventing it from harming me. I have a little economic suspicion in my mind: if the advertiser has sufficient margin to try to buy my attention, there's probably a better value option available somewhere else.
Coming back to "obligation", the content producer who believes that viewing ads is payback for producing the content, is confusing their chosen payment mechanism with their self interest. The mechanics of advertising is that the advertiser pays the content producer for the number of eyeballs that the content producer can deliver. The content producer, having bought an eyeball with some content, thereby feels robbed when the eyeball exhibits free will and doesn't do as it's told.
The only advertising that I don't find offensive is that which is extremely relevant, such as affiliate links discussing the product at hand, but simultaneously don't require tracking my behaviour, but rather rely on my being interested in that niche.
In other words: advertisers, don't come to me, I'll come to you.
I don't agree. If someone got a magazine, and before reading it they cut out all the ads are they committing theft? If I mute my radio while ads play, am I a thief? I'd bet that most reasonable people would say no. The content providers serve the ads, how end users interact with them is up to said users.
Ad blocking, in my view, is analogous to muting your radio. The content provider delivered the ads, how the user interacts with them is up to each individual.
It's not a false analogy at all. Muting the TV, changing the channel, or leaving the room when ads are on all deprive the advertiser their desired eyeballs to target. I believe that if TVs had been invented nowadays the mute functionality wouldn't be allowed during commercials because it would be seen as interfering with a profit model.
In many ways, Web ads are worse than TV ads because they often aren't switching between ads and content -- they are experienced at the same time. Most Webpages with ads aren't a commercial and then the content, it's the content with the commercials at the periphery of your vision. This means that without adblocking, the user cannot make the choice to read the content undistracted by commercials as they can with TV.
A closer analogy would be if TV shows came with commercials playing (sometimes with sound or popups) along all the borders of a TV show, and it was considered piracy to put a piece of cardboard over that ad-filled border. Muting is no different.
Rather than just blocking the request for the ad, if an ad blocker allowed the requesting site to make the request for the ad but then just sent the data to the browser's equivalent of /dev/null, I'd be fine with that as long as I never had to see/hear the ad.
This is of course ripe for abuse, but that's just synonymous for digital advertising in general. I don't consider it any different than me hitting mute on the TV during ad breaks or getting up and going to another room during that break.
Do you consider it a moral failing to go pee while an ad plays on the TV? To change stations in the car when an ad comes on? To turn to talk with your friends at the table when the game pauses and an ad comes on?
An ad blocker is no different except being automated. And the analytic spying it fights is automated too.
Ideologically, I am inclined to agree. I have an epidermic reaction to advertising in general. However, these extensions exist in a context where they depend on the majority of users not using them. If every browser had them, the economy of the web would change completely. Very few users who take active steps against ads want to pull a Stallman and relinquish entire parts of the Internet altogether; they want to see the content they are seeing, content that is most of the time supported by ads, without ads. The word 'blocker' is thus appropriate because the explicit goal is an asymmetric relationship based on other people making ads profitable.
In reality, the more interesting question would be whether we shouldn't limit our media consumption to begin with, or form a culture that is less dependent on advertising. If browsing with ads becomes mandatory some day, I will probably make the choice to severely cut the amount of Internet I gorge on. It will take some willpower, but every time I switch off the blocker and see what websites really are like I want to gag, so I won't be that difficult.
Nope. My attention belongs to me and me alone. It's not currency to pay for services with. Ad blockers are not only ethical, they're justified self defense.
Do I think it's fine to walk away during an advert break on a US TV station or to mute? Yeah that's fine.
Can you cut up your magazine and reconstruct it with the advertising pages removed? Yeah fine.
Both are different from advert blocking because of the automation and the specific targeting of the workaround. I think that's where it crosses into not as morally reasonable.
I think it's also just a huge faff to run custom software in your browser just to avoid seeing some adverts.
1) We are using TVs to extrapolate what's acceptable for the internet. Why not just argue about internet directly?
2) If you want to keep using the TV analogy, ad blockers are like distributing a device for automatically muting/blacking out every TV ad, for free. Do you think free over the air TV broadcasts would exist for very long if such a device were the norm?
I agree with that sentiment, and indeed maybe I would browse without an ad-blocker as well if the costs could be lowered, but that's not really what my argument is about. I'm making no claims as to how feasible it is to browser without an ad-blocker, but on the moral and ethical implications of browsing with an ad-blocker. I don't think it's right to pre-judge all sites based on prior experiences with some sites, and to then resort to an unfair exchange for goods and services. I do it, you do it, but I still don't think it's right. That said, the (small) amount that it's wrong and the level of inconvenience (or worse) that ads cause leaves be unwilling to change my behavior and stop using an ad-blocker. That said, I still recognize the unfairness, I try not to justify my actions post-facto.
Absolutely. I run adblock, and HTTP Switchboard but I am absolutely OK with Google's ads (and actually, Facebook sponsored posts as well) because they're consistently framed as ads and they don't impose a big cognitive load. I even click on them sometimes, and even make purchases sometimes! If you tell me your commercial message politely, well, I may or may not be interested but I don't mind. But if You engage in the visual equivalent of shouting with eye-catching designs, animation, faux-interactivity and so on - then I will tune you out. I guess advertisers use these techniques because they work on enough people to be profitable, so they don't care about the sales they lose by irritating people like myself to the point of being blocked. But I don't think they're doing their clients any favors.
The one thing from Google that I do block is advertising on YouTube. Just give it up and try something else already - why would I want to import everything that sucks about television/radio advertising?
This is why I have no moral qualms about using adblockers or anything like that. I'm thankful that I grew up in a family where the tradition was to always mute commercials on the TV. I can't help but think that if we didn't already have a tradition of mute buttons, modern media systems wouldn't have them. "You can't choose not to listen to these obnoxious ads, that's like stealing!"
My main issue with ads is the power disparity that can result. Those in charge of advertising and marketing have powerful tools at their disposal -- a wealth of data about how people respond, real-time analytics and A/B testing down to the pixel level to optimize that last percentage point of audience capture, and training in the nature of cognitive biases and how to exploit them. It's a hacking war in people's minds, and against such attackers, what defenses does the average person have? To what degree are untrained people able to resist these influences but by adblocking?
Plenty of people (particularly here on HN) consider many or even all forms of advertising to be unethical. I don't think it's fair to ask someone to disable their ad blocker. For someone who never clicks on ads, the revenue generated by disabling is negligible anyway.
I explicitly said "there are people that click on those ads". Those people don't have Ad Blockers. I don't click on those ads, so I have an Ad Blocker. All I was saying was that it doesn't present an ethical problem.
Nobody is obligated to consume ads. I also believe it is fine to go to the bathroom during tv commercials or to turn down the radio when ads come on. Or to click the 'close' button on an online ad. And of course nobody is required to act upon the ads in any way. But in my opinion, there's a big difference between ads that you have to take some action to ignore, and applying some technology that passively, without any user action, completely eliminates all ads so there is no opportunity for them to make an impression. I see a very large distinction between the two, your line may be different.
Yes, I believe ad-blocking (assuming it works) is equivalent to piracy. In both cases, you are consuming someone's work (a song, a movie, an article) without compensating them in any way, enabled by technology, and without attempting to obtain the approval of the content provider.
Here's the bottom line: You have no obligation to view ads. You can distinguish between OK ads and not-OK ads in your head. Whatever. But if you refuse to accept a site's ad policy, here is your only ethical remedy: DON'T VISIT THE SITE. Reading the article entirely ad-free is no different than going to a restaurant and not paying the bill, or sneaking into a concert without buying a ticket, or watching a movie you downloaded for free via torrent. You are consuming someone's work, without any remuneration or compensation.
Sure, I'll be straight up honest: (for me personally) security plays only a small role, I just don't want to see ads.
Is muting the radio/TV unethical? Should I be forced to look at billboards on the highway? What about skipping the page of ads in a newspaper/magazine?
Nowhere else do people try to make the argument I am obligated to view ads, even if the ads subsidize a cheap/free product.
Why is the web special? Why is it suddenly unethical to avoid ads while browsing the web?
I'm not going to speak for anyone else on HN, but for me and most people around me, blocking ads while still consuming content is normal practice. Do you mute the TV, or leave the room during commercial breaks? Commercial TV is also funded by advertising, so if your position is that blocking ads is wrong, will you also argue that it is morally wrong to not watch TV commercials?
For me, blocking ads is a form of civil disobedience: I disagree with the predatory tactics of the ad industry, so I feel morally obligated not to support them. Arguing your case like it is just "consumers vs poor publishers" is ignoring the negative effects that a third party has on both the publishers and the consumers, and dismissing those arguments as "comical" might be part of the reason why it's so alien to you. It's the same as the case against music piracy: those arguments are also framed as "consumers vs poor artists" while completely ignoring the effects of the copyright-holding businesses.
Also, I don't think many people will tell you that they have a legal right to do so. The legal argument boils down to "there's no law against it", which is a different assertion than "there's an explicit law supporting me". Most people will instead tell you that they have a moral right to protect their computer or their life from the shady practices of advertisers.
reply