Why is it unethical? What ethical principle is being violated? (These are not rhetorical questions.)
Performing the exact opposite of the stated and expected purpose of the application, for money, is a violation of trust. There is an implied belief that a product should do what it claims (and its name clearly states a purpose -- ad BLOCK), and the plain English reading of the title makes that pretty clear.
Imagine a virus scanner that only blocked those viruses that didn't pay up.
Surf the web without annoying ads!
Can block tracking, malware domains, banners, pop-ups and video ads - even on Facebook and YouTube
Unobtrusive ads aren't being blocked in order to support websites (configurable)
It's free! (GPLv3)- Users want ads to just go away, period, the end.
- The devs want ads to be nice. So they swat down the nasty ones and permit the nice ones.
Ransomware was probably the wrong way to do that, but I can see why it was superficially appealing. "We check your ads for niceness, and then permit them. We won't give our effort away for free", being the idea behind it.
The utter shit people run on major sites these days is so patently offensive ("Single Mom's Weight Loss Trick!", "Get Government Money Tomorrow!") that I keep a blocker on for my own sanity. I'm consistently appalled at the extremely low quality advertising that supposedly reputable properties put on their sites.
Give me good ads, please. Don't give me garbage.
I see few to none on Firefox, but even with a firewall hosts blocklist, Chrome/Android shows the bottom-feeder stuff on, again, supposedly reputable publishers' sites: TIME, CNN, Salon, Vox, and more. And the only impression it gives me is that thes companies have to be absolutely desperate to let that crap darken their pages.
You're right, it's absolutely insulting. To both the reader and the sites running the spots.
If advertisers take a sudden "nice" approach, I'll keep blocking ads for another decade or so and see if the trend lasts. That's all I feel I owe them at this point.
They're experimenting with a new and better way to power the exact feature I installed the software for.
No trust is being violated here.
What gives Ad Block Plus the right or qualification to determine that my ad is a "bad" ad?
Why should ABP have the ability to suppress editorial or advertising content on my website, replace it with it's own advertising content and not share revenue with me?
Ad blocking itself may be considered a ethical issue as well, but it's a different ethical issue. With blocking, the decision is ultimately made by the end user. With ad injection, ABP is making itself a third party stakeholder.
The same way a person who downloads an antivirus expects it to block viruses.
Do you think there is some ultimate arbiter of what is and isn't "ethical"?
Replacing Ads with other ads is worse because you're not only depriving a content creator of revenue but then profiting off of their work. You could argue that it amounts to theft.
Is using fast-forward on your DVR unethical?
Is skimming past the ads in a newspaper or magazine unethical?
Is it ethical to let your eyes glide past the ads shown in a browser?
Is it ethical to read books from a free library rather than buying the right to read a copy from a store?
TV is paid on viewership numbers. Newspapers are paid on circulation. Gliding past ads on a site is factored into the CPM values. Books in a library are paid for and covered by the first-sale doctrine.
You don't think people who change channels to avoid ads/who use DVRs is factored into the price per viewer for TV ads?
Your individual impact might be harder to track than with ad-blockers, but on the aggregate you are driving down the price per viewer by switching on channels during ads, using DVR, etc.
(Imagine a world where 100% of people used a DVR and skipped ads. Obviously the price of TV ads would plummet. By using a DVR you are contributing to making our world, that world).
So if I had the free time, I would consider attending in order to ask pointed questions and warn other people away.
I think we're at a very Napster moment for content websites.
Additionally you can use things like Patreon or Google Contributor.
It is everyone's duty to burn all books, because a non-trivial and unpredictable portion of books contain hostile, abusive, invasive, and/or subversive content.
This is made apparent by:
>loss of data, loss of time, loss of money and loss of privacy.
Not really. There are certainly plenty of books which will lose you money and time.
More importantly, if the sole concern is "hostile payloads" then the acceptable ads program should be exactly what you support. I'm fine with ads on sites like Facebook where I know it's not going to take over my computer or launch a massive popup, and I support ABP in pushing more publishers towards acceptable ads.
But what about data or privacy?
>I'm fine with ads on sites like Facebook where I know it's not going to take over my computer or launch a massive popup
The concern there would be privacy/tracking via advertisements. I readily admit that is a silly argument if one is already using Facebook. I do not have a Facebook account. I do not know when, if ever, Facebook will extend their advertisements to be used on partnered sites instead of internal-only. I can block them in advance even if I may never see them at all.
If it means we go back to the days where people spent their own money to create pages because they were passionate about a subject, I'm fine with that. I miss that era. It sure beats advertisers thinking they are entitled to know where you go when you browse around the web.
The difference is that you're not having someone sweep the grocery store and remove all free sample ladies before you enter it. Ignoring a free sample lady is akin to ignoring an ad on page.
The primary difference though is that the lady doesn't take a photograph of you, follow you around the store noting everything you stop to look out or put in your cart, and then follow you out to the parking lot and go to the next store with you.
I'm not saying that what content owners or advertisers do is right or ethical, just that at it's core blocking the ads is unethical as well.