Advertising is devastating to my well-being
briancarper.net
briancarper.net
When we stop doing things that don't negatively affect us much and help others, we've lost the benefits of altruism that helped our species evolve beyond the rest.
It's up to content providers to figure out how to get paid. Guilt-tripping readers into viewing ads is one approach; running skeezy ads is another; paywalls or premium content is another; merchandising yet another. Each of those affects the value your readers get from your site. Given that, how can content providers best align their interest (getting paid) with their readers' interests (getting good content cheap/free)?
I submit that, if sites ran carefully-vetted ads that were of legitimate interest to their readers, were not annoying, and did not compromise user privacy, far fewer of us would use adblock.
How do you know if the site has changed if you are using adblock? If they do decide to change ads, it won't really matter because they are already blocked.
What about people that are using a computer with adblock already installed? They never saw the ads on the blocked site.
Adblock doesn't just block one site's ads. It blocks entire networks of ads, which hurts innocent sites that may or may not have intrusive ads. This is why I can't support its usage.
Ads are blocked for me by default, and i choose to unblock them in websites that generate repeated value for me.
this includes the content of the website, but also the speed and how the ads complement the design of the website itself.
I will consider paying website to get content completely ad free.
I would like to also have the option to get a discount for just clicking on the Ad from the vendor, if you want my attention offer me an incentive.
AdSense doesn't allow sites to do this. I don't know about other services.
For an individual site to get users who are already using adblock to stop, they may have to resort to the type of pleading or content-blocking Ars Technia did.
If, for example, your site has a community and ads are indeed "of legitimate interest", your community will discuss interesting ads. I have seen this happening on MetaFilter and Reddit.
Every now and then, an advertiser will make a mistake and pay for attention he could have gotten for free. But I don't think we can expect them to do that all the time. The only way to make money from advertising is to accept money from people who can't get attention otherwise.
The fact is, most advertising is not obtrusive. Despite the problems that Google Ads has, it is not visually obtrusive. Hell, half of the time I don't even notice them. Does it hurt me? No. Does it help the site sustain itself? Yes. Would I notice a pay wall or product placement? Yes. Would it obstruct my enjoyment of the website? Yes.
To directly answer your question: you should care if you hurt society. If people stop being altruistic altogether, politeness and civility go out the window. An Ayn Rand style system pops up, with people being concerned how to give themselves the most power and goods while screwing others over the most. Maybe you're fine with that; I'm not.
It would be much more practical to create things that boost advertising's strengths, but mute the weaknesses, rather than trying to convince people that current ads are good/tolerable. Like you pointed out, Google Ads are a step in the right direction, but obviously still lacking. The market always points you in the right direction, better to listen than to fight it.
[Ed. note: As expected, "red in tooth and claw" is voted up, and "people need to cooperate" is voted down. If that's karma then I'll have no part of it.]
Don't mistake culture and societal norms for the norms of natrual human behavior.
Wright's thesis for humanity is that people cooperate far more in the context of society than they did even 20,000 years ago, allowing for much larger populations. This larger population enables more diversity and further complexity.
Indeed, the notion of "private property" often comes hand in hand with authoritarian force: http://everything2.com/title/The+Enclosure+Movement
Rightful property is established by production or trade. A rough recursive definition goes: Your body and mind are your property. If you make a thing using your property, that thing is your property. If you obtain a thing by trading your property for it, that thing is your property. (I view "gift" as a special case of trade, where the price is zero.)
I would also define "trade" as a voluntary contractual interaction between two parties. The word "voluntary" precludes force, and the word "contractual" precludes fraud.
Certainly an infant produces spit, vomit, and poop. But it doesn't stop there. The infant also produces cuteness, affection, and love. In any case the parents give the infant food, shelter, education, and care for free. Those are gifts.
So the infant grows into a strong, healthy, and wise adult. He obtains that position largely through gifts from his parents, but he has also done some production and trade along the way, for example any jobs he did as a teenager.
Now he produces far more than spit, vomit, and poop. He uses his mind and body to produce all sorts of things other people value. He owns the products of his mind and body right up until the time he trades them for something else.
Simple example: he buys a set of tools using the money he earned as a teenager cutting grass and starts a small repair business. He is now using both the physical and intellectual capital he has accumulated over the years to produce even more goods and services. That capital is his property.
So my definition gets off the ground far better than you suggest. Spit and poop ... you so funny!
Humans have been doing these things for as long as there have been humans...
> then the human race would die out.
...and this hasn't happened. Ergo, your argument is wrong.
I said that if such behavior ever became the norm, the human race would die. As of now, only a small portion of humans behave this way. This happy fact enables humans to survive.
However, on the basis of your comment I will scale back my argument a bit. It might be possible for some humans to survive in a movie fantasy post-apocalyptic world of pure rampaging feral aggression. But the number would be very few. It would consist of a few people picking berries and hunting rabbits in secret, and gangs of others occasionally sniffing them out and looting them.
In reality, in order for a human being to survive, he must have things and services produced by other humans. He can't do it all himself. If he wants to ensure that other humans continue to produce the things he needs, the best way is to offer something in return.
Certainly voluntary trade is not his only option. He could plead hardship and gain some sympathy that way. He could commit fraud, deceiving others into giving him what he wants. He could use force to take what he wants.
But ultimately all of these options are limited and fraught with risks of their own. Why risk death when you can just wash a few dishes instead?
So yes, humans have been doing stupid evil things for as long as there have been humans, and they will continue to do so. My point is, stupidity and evil are not sustainable or reliable methods for achieving life, happiness, health, and wealth. That is why they are called "stupid" and "evil."
Actually he can, and quite easily, as long as he's got the appropriate skills and the population density is low. We can survive comfortably in most environments; it's just that today our environment consists mostly of other humans.
"Design" as in the memetic evolution has an unnaturally recursive feedback system compared to our biological evolution, thus producing patterns of regularity determined by initial tiny quirks? Or what the people who downmodded you seem to think you meant?
* as practiced in real life not some wanker's theoretical definition.
PS it was probably selfishness and greed (combined with tribal "us vs them" so that (generally) you'll steal from the fuckers in next valley over but not your children) that helped our species destroy and/or exceed our competition.
If I block ads, the site should have a higher conversion rate, so they should be able to ask for more money for the ad impressions.
Yes. As Ars said explicitly in their post, every time you choose to block the rendering of an ad on their page, their ad provider does not count the impression, and they do not get paid anything. So yes, you're directly screwing Ars by costing them money, denying them revenue, and nullifying their business model.
> If a web site asks people who hate ads to watch ads, they are screwing the people who pay for the ads.
In the first instance, "screwing" means "putting out of business". In the second, it means "mildly inconveniencing".
> If I block ads, the site should have a higher conversion rate
Again, if you'd read Ars' post, you would know that they are paid on impressions, not conversion rate.
I read that, but as I said, if they have a higher conversion rate, they should be able to negotiate a higher fee for the ads anyway.
On the other aspects, I guess we just disagree (why is it worse to screw advertisers than ad pushing people)?
The idea one makes money from ads simply by having it displayed is copying a highly speculative advertising model of print (where the effect can hardly be measured) to the web (where you can measure it be by actual clicks) put simply its vaporware of the worst kind, and a business that hedges its revenue on this model is hedging its existence on speculation alone.
The premise of advertising on the web is highly informed by age old print models that have failed that industry and put into doubt the efficacy of anything that is uttered in them.
users have a choice. You want effective Ads on the web, offer the users something,so they wont block you. or go away. effective Ads on the web are to be about incentive.
I own the delivery device, i can manipulate it as i will. This is not a newspaper, i control it, not the vendor. i will do what i want with it. the business owner need to give me a an incentive.
It's awfully hard to measure that value in any kind of meaningful way, but brand awareness is worth spending money on in many cases.
Pay per click ads aren't generally worth enough money to sustain sites that produce content. Aggregators, search engines, social networks, etc, have a much, much lower cost per pageview, and can do pretty well. On Ars, we'd need to average about 50,000 pageviews per normal post to pay the writer for it with something like Google AdSense. And that's assuming that the campaigns AdSense picks are pretty good.
There are whitepaper links and stuff you can get much better CPC rates for, but those generally only work if you're sneaky about them and embed them in content, or make them look like site resources.
If everyone blocked ads, no one would serve them. They would charge for content. This is probably the fairest model for everyone. But content providers like Ars want to mislead their customers into thinking they are getting something for free, so they make their money from advertising: that is, they don't sell content, they use content as 'bait' to attract attention and then sell that attention to advertisers. An ad-blocker is acting perfectly ethically and rationally by refusing to give their attention---after all, Ars is pretending to be free, you can hardly blame the viewers who take them up on the offer. The only ones being screwed by this are the non-blocking viewers, who are forced to give more of their attention to compensate for the blockers.
No they're not. The point I was making is that you necessarily cost them money every time you visit a page, but by blocking the ad, you're also denying them the revenue that would balance out that cost.
> But content providers like Ars want to mislead their customers into thinking they are getting something for free
I think that even the least savvy of Internet users understand the advertising model. No one is "misled" to believe that running a site like Ars costs nothing. They're not "pretending to be free" any more than a newspaper full of ads is.
Ars wants people to think that they are in the business of reporting tech news, when in fact they are in the business of selling individuals to advertisers. I don't see any notices on Ars explicitly asking people to view ads in exchange for viewing content. The reason is that doing so would confront people with the reality of the site and turn them off, even though many of them understand the ad model in principle. And yes, a newspaper full of ads is also pretending to be free.
If Ars won't explicitly require their users to view ads, then they can hardly complain when people skip them. I have no sympathy.
What if the technology wasn't visible, wasn't in browsers, but instead was in our heads? What if we had a perfect ability to selectively filter out what we see and not let it affect us consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously? What if our awarenesses were so under our control that advertising could be scientifically proven to be useless?
Would this ability to focus our minds, free ourselves from distractions and pay deliberate attention only to what we willed, be morally or ethically wrong?
(And indeed economic models which work on the basis of enlightened self interest have been the most successful and delivered the most good to their adherents).
1) Pay for a subscription.
2) If no subscription is offered, ask for one to be offered.
3) If you'd simply like less offensive ads, ask for less offensive ads.
Taking actions that in sum lower the probability of things you like being produced in the future is incredibly stupid.
"The internet is also a wonderful thing. FIRST a person or company puts a lot of information somewhere that everyone can read it effortlessly for free, and THEN they sometimes expect me to look at their ads. And I can simply choose not to."
Ars Technica doesn't expect you to look at their ads. They expect you to render their ads or pay for a subscription. If you choose to do neither of those, you are a parasite.
If a site is running ads that they don't mind being associated with and are worthy of reader's attention, they shouldnt mind hosting them directly from their webserver as content.
For what it's worth, I wish all those people complaining would indeed just block their entire site for people with ad blockers. I don't even want to see their sites anymore.
Or at least they should have a warning splash page: "warning, if you proceed to this site, you are stealing from us - OK/Cancel".
Sites will just make a simple technology switch and host ads from their own domain rather than from 3rd party ad servers in the same manner as they host content.
-The sites will make more money as there is no way to block the ads.
-The sites will make more money as they will not allow low click through spam.
-The viewers will have a more pleasant experience. The site will be less likely to host malicious ads, scams, and annoying attention grabbers on their own servers.
In conclusion, AdBlockers are a disruptive technology that are actually making the web a better place.
You are a programmer. If you have so much faith in the model you're suggesting, build and sell software that will allow publishers to do it.
If thy host them themselves then the website has to develop trusted analytics on the who saw the ad. Who clicked on the ad. Who bought something using the ad.
All of these analytics are what make internet advertising worth it. Without it most companies wouldn't bother. And that just increases the cost for the content producer. Now instead of just being a content producer he has to be an advertising analytics expert. What you suggest is not a solution it's a step backward.
People seem to want to have their cake and eat it too whenever this comes up. The fact is your favorite site has to make money in 99% of the cases. It has only 2 potentially viable ways to do this. And of the 2 only 1 has been shown to be consistently viable in almost every place it's tried. That 1 is advertising. Subscriptions and micropayments have only worked in few outlier cases.
So if you like your favorite site and want to use it then suck it up and live with the fact that they have to advertise in order to be there.
Sites will instead become a direct seller of the commodity of time units of ad space. The buyers will be advertisers. How can commodities be efficiently allocated between many buyers and sellers? It's called a market. If you've read one economics book you'll be able to come up with 10 possible business ideas from here.
OTOH, every time you load an Ars page without loading the ad, you cost them money and deny them revenue. This time, Ars is the business, and you're confirming that their service provides value in your life, but you're refusing to pay the cost that goes along with this benefit: allowing an ad to load. It's definitely not stealing, but it doesn't seem that far off to me. Comparing this to "hurting" businesses by just not being interested in the product they provide seems ludicrous.
If you think a site you enjoy has a business model that sucks, shouldn't you tell them? Passively making their business model even less effective will make them less likely to exist in the future. It is a dumb thing to do.
I think community sites and subscription sites will be there to fill the void when ad-driven sites go down in flames. Apparently Ars is still in business though.
I won't shed any tears or feel any guilt if sites fail, because I think people will produce content for free. I think creation and dissemination of information is a basic human drive for a sufficient subset of the population to keep all of us "parasites" well fed. If you can figure out a way to get paid for it, good for you, but don't think you can demand that I experience the world through your ad utopia. I refuse to live on your terms.
I don't think it's particularly stupid because the actions of an individual choosing to block ads will have a negligible impact on a site, whereas viewing the site without annoying advertisements will provide a more favorable experience for that user.
Hence, from the position of the individual ad blocking is a rational choice.
(I'm aware that in aggregate this leads to sites folding, but I'm talking purely from an individual perspective. Tragedy of the commons and all that.)
Adblock plus gets almost 1,000,000 downloads per week (you can check this out on the Mozilla website). This is no longer just a few individuals blocking ads.
It takes no effort for you to view an advertisement. Viewing something that may only take a few seconds of your time will help the site you are visiting and keep them running. Now that you are blocking it, the site will never know if you like or hate a particular ad and will continue to show bad ads.
This guy (first sentence, no less): "There's an interesting article on Ars Technica about how blocking ads is somehow unethical..."
Give me a break.
I think in some ways the Internet and its vast anonymity feeds into a culture where many people do not think about the people, the families, the careers that go into producing a website.
And:
And anyway, my point still stands: if you like this site you shouldn't block ads.
These sound like ethical statements to me. I may be reading more into the language of the article than is warranted, but that's how I read it: "Don't block ads because it hurts people, hurts businesses, and is therefore wrong to do."
On the topic of your article (I assume it's yours?):
I pay for a book, and then I read the book start-to-finish with no ads, no distractions. A few pages at the back maybe, but I can ignore those. Books are nice.
I assume you can see the difference here?
In terms of forcing you too look at the ads. I dont think the ars article tries to imply that either. They are saying they would appreciate it if you looked at their ads. Please.
I dont know if you have seen the ars site with ads but they are one I personally unblock: they aren't particularly in your face, are generally aesthetically pleasing and I also like their content (some of the best on the web). Encouraging that approach is a plus IMO.
If I had to generate revenue to keep my sites going, I would find a way other than advertising to do it. Or I'd shut them down.
Seems a "shoot yourself in the foot" scenario. Chances are people wouldn't actually pay monetary cost for your content - people hate doing that generally. Adverts are "zero cost" to a consumer :) most are happy to swap free content for a few adverts.
Why is it unethical, as your seemingly suggesting, to do that? :)
I looked at the ads on Ars briefly, both animated Flash ads, one for razor blades and the other I couldn't even tell what it was selling. I admit to being very emotional about this, and I can understand how some people can tolerate these, but I can't.
I'm uncertain I see your point about books. Are you asking why I can ignore the ads in the back of books, but not ignore the ones on websites? Because it's possible to read the book start to finish without any knowledge whatsoever that the ads exist. It's trivial to ignore them. If the ads on websites were all relegated to some page I had to deliberately navigate to, that'd be similar.
Books have no ads in because it's paid for.
!?? Is this April 1st or will you next claim that the letters "g" and "x" upset you too? What about the number 283?
Are you OK with a bunch of marketing guys sitting in an office thinking "How can we manipulate people's sex drives to maximize profit this week?" Razor commercials: Hunky guy shaves; heavily-airbrushed, scantily-clad woman looks on longingly. Implication: Buy our razors, get laid. Flashing lights and "power words". Repeat over and over until you can't forget it. What's the difference between commercials and any other form of propaganda? Commercials are more mundane, but use the same principles.
Sorry, but I feel mildly insulted by this. I feel like I'm being treated like an animal. After the ten thousandth attempt to have such a thing drilled into my brain, I start to become annoyed. I'm amazed so many people happily imbibe and internalize these things without any complaint.
I don't agree with everything in your blog post, though it was an interesting read, thank you. Specifically, I don't run an adblocker, but for most sites I don't seem to even notice the ads. I'm not sure if that's because I'm conditioned to see them as normal, or because I'm just not seeing them. I would hazard a guess that their impact is much less than TV ads though.
Regardless, I do sympathize with people who run websites that offer useful information or services, but don't have a viable revenue model that doesn't involve ads. I get a lot of value from these sorts of sites (for instance, the sites of open source software projects), but there are too many of them for me to want to pay a subscription to all of them. (Perhaps there's an opportunity there?) However, most of these sites that I get the most value out of are not about screwing money out of people, just paying for their hosting costs.
To compare this with TV, I generally don't want what's on TV, even if I can download it for free, but I do want the content on many of the sites supported by advertising. For the moment, I see it as a fair trade.
EDIT: Clarify last sentence of third paragraph.
Totally fine with it. As long as I have the choice to ignore and not respond to something, it don't annoy me. It only annoys me if I have no choice.
There are some people who get upset and write letters to the TV company when a swear word or some blasphemy is uttered or a nipple shown.. sane people turn off the TV if they don't like it and do something else for a while.
Adverts are fine by me because I have a degree of free will to be influenced by them to the point of my choosing. Sure, a Coke ad in the middle of winter can make me feel nostalgic and want to grab a Coke. But I like Coke, so that's fine by me. This isn't upsetting.
Propaganda is everywhere and advertising is only a small part of it. Almost every word out of a person in power has a bias, a motivation, or an ulterior motive. Even regular people in our lives don't say what they really want to say. When one's wife sweet-talks them to get something she wants, that's propaganda. When one gives their wife a compliment but has sex on the brain, that's propaganda. This stuff isn't always bad - it's how life works and it won't go away.
I feel like I'm being treated like an animal.
You are. I am. We all are. And it's awesome to feel these rushes of emotions because it means we're unpredictable, unique, and alive.
Perhaps they change the ads based on region. I see 2 image only ads - no flash.
EDIT: ah, sorry. Now I see one of them as a flash ad (a rollover one)
When they tried not serving content to ad blockers, "there was a healthy mob of people criticizing us for daring to take any kind of action against those who would deny us revenue." This ignorance of Ars' business model led them to write a post to try and explain to people how they use advertising, and why ad blockers are bad for the future of their site. Every time you load an Ars article and do not render the ad, you cost Ars money and actively drive their business into the ground. Anyone who understands this argument should also understand that deliberately harming the business of a site you like is just dumb, especially over something as minor as "I don't like to look at that!"
It's interesting to me that Brian's post completely ignores Ars' content-blocking experiment, especially because it was the entire impetus for their post. To me, it seems like a perfectly reasonable policy (although I think redirecting users to a subscription page rather than showing them nothing at all would be more effective). I'd be interested to hear if he thinks it's as "garish and hideous" as displaying ads in the first place.
edit: thanks for responding, Brian. I think discussing this in the post would have made your argument a lot stronger.
I have no problem with sites that have subscription models. I have no problem with sites making money.
He makes it sound easy. As though there weren't a multitude of websites facing the same problem with covering their operating costs.
TV before cable faced a similar dilemma. Anyone could access it, but how do you pay for it? Ads did. Cable TV came along with commercial-free channels, but the consumer would pay for those directly. That solution has been discussed with some websites, and it's generally ill-received (e.g. NYT, Hulu).
I think ads can work, I wish they were done better in many cases. What I won't do is criticize them for their business model without offering a suggestion of my own.
Clearly not enough people value what they do enough to warrant paying $50 a year (I don't, but I only go on their site a few times a year and am totally cool with seeing the ads so I consider it great value).
Thats the issue, you paid money for the book, it's the business model the author used to make writing the book worthwhile.
Historically the Internet doesn't seem to support content producers this way.
A system that lets willing participants opt out of ad-viewship for direct micropayments. Wait a second, I think what I'm describing is close to the new 'Flattr' -- but still not quite it. Let the users choose between micropayments or ad-viewership.
* looks at flattr * will have to poke into that.
edit: why not a combination? Micro-pay at a minimum value (say a couple cents) to get no ads. Click more than once to add more payment % to that site.
I saw a few of these sites back then when the discussion flared up the first time, but haven't seen any since.
Some people whitelisted, some subscribed, some boycotted. Besides, at best, you can only make it hard to hide ads / content. If data is transferred, data can be manipulated, and data can be ignored.
I'd suppose the end-state of adblockers is something that does a rendered-page analysis to detect content, rather than looking at code / origin of info.
Maybe there would always be people who "steal", but are they really so many that it would hurt?
http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/
You also get full-text RSS feeds and the occasional bit of content exclusive to subscribers, as well as some other (less noteworthy) perks.
(Disclosure: I'm under contract with Ars Technica, working on a projected unrelated to any of this.)
"Banner-free browsing on Ars Technica means no distractions, just content. Better yet, the ad-free pages are optimized so there are no "holes" where ads used to be. It's a tighter experience."
There are people so soft that they consider the world a "hideous place to live" because of some advertising? There are people who can barely eat each day without getting so offended by a few commercials.
It so happens that advertisements are devastating to my well-being.
This is crazy talk. Is it even possible to argue against someone who resorts to saying they get "very emotional" when seeing any sort of advertising or that advertising "devastates" their well being? Is he scared of animal crackers as well?
Likewise, ad-blocking isn't really "devastating" the internet, is it?
I expect some people will agree and some disagree with what I wrote. I enjoy the discussion, but I don't get anything else out of it. I didn't have any notion that I'd convince anyone of anything. It was not an attempt to manipulate anyone. Not a conscious attempt anyways. Certainly not an attempt to manipulate people into giving me money, so I think the analogy doesn't hold.
However I may be wrong about this, it may be that my language is overboard in the way you say. Thanks for some food for thought.
When was the last time animal crackers told your daughter she was fat, or wasn't wearing enough makeup, or wasn't dressing slutty enough?
When was the last time animal crackers tried to take advantage of a person who had financial problems, by trying to convince them that they needed another high-interest credit card, a floating-rate mortgage, or 'debt consolidation'?
Should I keep going?
A few times I was so disgusted by a movie that I walked out of a theater. I don't have the choice to walk out of most advertising, I don't have a choice which advertising I see in the first place. Most of the ads are in the worst possible taste and dripping with hypocrisy. I guess you get used to it somehow, after all those years. I bet you could get used to eating shit too.
There is a coffee shop in Tempe, AZ that I very very rarely go to. Why? Because the wifi there is horrible. It's slow; there are too many people there using pandora and not enough bandwidth to go around.
Would it be appropriate for me to whine about this while continuing to go there?
When using a website (or any service) you are basically choosing to endure a bit of inconvenience (spending money, or viewing ads) in exchange for something you want (coffee, content). I get that people want to skip the first part, but I don't get how they think that could ever work.
Easier said than done.
Adblock is like Napster. People want the content; the vast majority of publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers doesn't like the price they're being asked for the benefit they're getting, and many of them are willing to take the content without paying.
There are always people who won't pay no matter what - in the music world, filesharing is still around. But a lot of people started paying for music again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay.
There are a few sites like LiveJournal and MetaFilter that have ad-free options for paid users. Maybe this is a small niche and will never be big business. But maybe there are a lot more user who would pay to support ad-free content - if the price is right.
Of course, every website in the world would have to support it and micropayments don't work, so... it's not realistic.
When someone says ads are "screwing them over", I have to laugh and wonder what kind of life that person leads that annoying ads are considered an atrocity. If you want to see being "screwed over", look no further than our tax code. Our tax code is a system where one does not own 40% of their life, where there is an explicit understanding that anyone above a certain income level is not going to get out of it what they pay into it, where there has become a rational expectation that the money will largely -- to the order of 90% -- be wasted on bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. In all of the battlefields of life, you choose online advertisements to rail against? Hell, give Sally Struthers a dollar a day already.
This is Econ 101 dogma. I'm surprised you can write this without examining it further. People are not rational actors. That's why advertising works.
What's particularly interesting about your using this argument is that advertising exists precisely to manipulate the non-rational decision making of consumers.
Once we realize that humans in general are wired such that they make certain cognitive mistakes again, and again, we have to modify our understanding of a "freely contracted trade".
A trade where I take advantage of your human nature to encourage you to make a decision that is in my interest is not truly freely-entered.
With respect to your tax rant ... you should know that people respond more to what is annoying or vivid than to longer term considerations.
Ads are a low-grade but constant irritation, whereas I make enough money that taxes are just some numbers on paper.
While advertising is primarily persuasive (there is still a significant informative portion of advertising), there's nothing wrong with being persuasive. You're attempting to be persuasive with your replies in this thread. If being persuasive is being unethically manipulative, then we had better stop all debate right now.
People's moment to moment interests often differ from their stated long-term interests. If this were untrue, impulse purchases would be impossible. How do you explain impulse purchases? How do you explain people who "want to lose weight", yet eat an extra snack that they know they shouldn't eat.
Notice that I didn't write "compelled", anywhere. That's your choice of words, and it creates a straw-man argument. "Enticed" would be closer to the mark.
Let's examine this claim of yours that "there's nothing wrong with being persuasive". Persuasion doesn't exist by itself. One tries to persuade someone of something. Considering persuasion alone, without considering the context is not very deep thinking.
If I try to persuade you to believe something that is untrue, or that is likely not in your best interest, then actually, there is something wrong with that persuasion.
I'm arguing here, not for the sake of arguing, but to persuade you of something that I believe is true. While many advertisers may believe their own claims, many do not. Furthermore, many who believe their own claims do so out of a failure to question them with the same rigour as they might question a position they disagree with.
Going meta, the pattern I see in your response is that you take what I wrote to an absurd extreme, and then point out the absurdity of (your interpretation) of my argument. What do you think of this?
The author seems to be saying that he is entitled to take from the creator of content without having any obligation to give something in return. I believe that this misses one of the most basic principles of our economy - namely the idea of a value-exchange. You get, you give. I believe it's morally wrong to get, get, get, and not be willing to give.
No, he has no obligation to stare at an advertisement, but if he's not willing to stare at the ad he should look at other ways to compensate the creator of content or else not feel entitled to view the content.
Not that it matters, but the author's post is obviously link-bait also.
I am pretty sure such an downloading ad blocker would be considered a kind of click fraud.
I didn't block them until a few months a go. But there were some adds that were just so obnoxious. The worst were these ones that played really loud sounds -- they made me keep my speakers mute, because I didn't want my computer to spontaneously start playing music and wake people up.
One day I was just utterly fed up. I went to Mozilla's site, downloaded an add-blocker, set it to the default settings, and voila! Everything was much nicer.
I'm going to reinstall my OS soon -- I find using apt-get to upgrade break things -- and I'll use the Internet without an add-blocker for a few days. If things are as bad as they were, I'll use one again. Maybe try and find a list that only blocks obnoxious adds, though.
If you have the views espoused in this article you should have no problem using an ad blocker which tells the web-server that it's blocking ads and leaves it's up to the website whether it chooses to return you content sans-advertising.
If you're using an ad blocker that specifically misleads the website into thinking ads are being viewed when they're not, then that's clearly unethical.
Imagine if you asked someone for a favour and they asked you for a favour in return. And then they did what you wanted but you only pretended to do what they wanted. That's exactly the same situation as this.
The ads are annoying. The alternative is $50/year. It just feels like quite a big sum of money when the extra benefits are not that interesting. $50/year that also gives me a good daily iPad edition, with articles I can save, without ads and full archive access may start being in the right realm for me.
Maybe I should just pony up the $50 to experiment, I did save it on my dropped newspaper subscription recently. :)
To the author: I think that if you cut the paranoia, you would actually be wealthier in spirit as well as material "net worth".
No. He is saying that pot should be legalized.
It's funny because I have heard so many pro-pot legalization people that our prisons shouldn't be filled with people that do drugs. I have not heard of one person that is in prison for personal consumption of drugs. Most cops won't even bother.
The people in prison are the dealers.
http://gizmodo.com/5105045/the-first-apple-tech-support-call...