It's not like the ads just appear while you're sitting around doing nothing. You see the ads when you are receiving something with them. The ad companies are paying for your attention with the content you consume.
It is your attention which you are agreeing to trade for information or entertainment.
>They're welcome to block me from their websites, if they feel that's not acceptable.
This is more commonly happening now. Then we all have to deal with people complaining about that. Taking up /my/ attention which they are refusing to pay for. Pay me for reading your posts.
You're objectively wrong. If that were the case, I would be blocked from accessing the content without "paying the price".
The situation is instead clearly analogous to a "pay what you feel it is worth" model.
The creators of the content allow anyone to view it, regardless of whether they run an ad blocker or not. Sometimes, they place alternative content where the ads would be, requesting that I disable my ad blocker, or like them on facebook as an alternative.
I think the "recommended price" of this "pay what you feel it is worth" model, which is usually watching advertising and allowing myself to be tracked, is too high.
I have once or twice directly sent the creator $5-10, when they offered a payment method that didn't require a paypal account. If it's good content, that's pretty reasonable. Dans Data[1] /is/ good content, even if it's getting a bit dated these days.
Once or twice in all your years online you have agreed to an alternate funding method and you think that is sustainable for content creators?
You can make a lot of arguments for ad blocking. I ad block because it slows my computer down. Making the claim that you ad block because your attention is more valuable though is a joke.
It's not a joke. It's avoiding death by thousand cuts.
Time is literally the most valuable commodity we have. Anything you do to waste someone's time - like displaying obtrusive, annoying ads - is in my books an act of aggression.
>There's enough better content available for free and without ads
Surely you'd just stick with the better content that doesn't use ads all the time right?
Because I get linked to them. Also, social objects - other people are visiting those pages, so I have to check them out too in order to participate in the conversation.
Also, YouTube.
> Surely you'd just stick with the better content that doesn't use ads all the time right?
Yeah, and I mostly do.
YouTube offers a way to pay for an ad free experience. Are you a paying member?
See my point about social objects.
> YouTube offers a way to pay for an ad free experience. Are you a paying member?
They don't offer it in my country, so no. But I do am a paying subscriber of Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime Video, FWIW.
That's a shame. They offer Prime video in Poland? I don't even think we get it in Australia :/
Well, yes - that's life, basically :). Writing a comment here is also me trading time for feeling connected ;).
> That's a shame. They offer Prime video in Poland? I don't even think we get it in Australia :/
I'm surprised, I thought Australia is usually right after US in such things. As for Poland, they've started offering it something like a week ago. I signed up immediately after I learned about it, mostly because I wanted to watch "The Man in the High Castle".
There is a rarely discussed topic of access for people who don't have funds or means to obtain it - like myself 10 years ago. It's tangential to ad blocking discussion, but a reason why I'm not sure if a pay-per-view Internet would be a good idea in general.
Oh, and if it helps me look better - I'm not really "ad blocking" per se, I'm doing responsive administration of my secondary OS (i.e. the browser) resources by using uMatrix, which makes me put some up-front decisionmaking work about which requests are or are not allowed on any page I visit ;). But it's fun, and I get to see how more and more insane the web is becoming :).
So maybe that's the cost of not seeing ads, you don't get to participate in conversations.
It's like if Stallman would, instead of making GNU, hack into MS and put the source online because he "just has to".
Most of the time, taking a moral stand requires sacrifice.
Your analogy doesn't work, because this is about ownership. I own my machine, so I get to decide what will run and how.
You own your machine but not the text. Right now it's still somewhat hypothetical, but what would be your opinion if the major websites would put a T&C that you have to enable (Let's say it was safe JS) ads to view content. Would you still say "it's my machine and I view what I want when I want"?
How are adblock-blockers (which are counterbalanced by adblock-blockers-blockers by adblockers) different?
You don't get to own the text just because you can read it, see if you read this - it is still my text (because I wrote it!).
>what would be your opinion if the major websites would put a T&C that you have to enable (Let's say it was safe JS) ads to view content.
And how would I know it's safe? I don't even let the closest friends on the wifi because they don't run adblockers on their phone and I don't want my router to get pwned [1] just because someone like Forbes is making a buck using Ads.
> Would you still say "it's my machine and I view what I want when I want"?
It is still my machine, so long as I physically own it. If I run a virtual machine in the cloud it's not mine you see, because then I'm just renting it. If ad networks want to remove the ability to block ads they would have to own the machines and rent out those computers to users, they are free to do this.
[1] https://www.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/home-route...
You're free to do what you want, but not to read content.
It works fabulously as supplemental income for talented artisnal content creators who make their content because they care. They'll probably still need a day job like the rest of us, but there's a good chance people will hire them for those same skills that make them great content creators, whether they write interesting blogs or make neat-o electronics projects or produce great art or whatever.
I'm all about supporting inspired human creation. Maybe we'll implement basic minimum income and some of these people can safely dedicate their life to their talent, and inspire others along the way?
It can't possibly sustain content farms like buzzfeed. I consider this to be a great positive, and wish buzzfeed as swift and impactful a cratering as possible.
You strike me as a standup chap who would not resort to such techniques, so I'm sure you'll now be willing to explain to me how you came to such a conclusion, so I can help dispel your misconception?
The fact is a lot of great content is expensive to produce.
I'm afraid to inform you that the facts you have stated do not contain sufficient information to make such an inference. You cannot know with any certainty based on these facts alone whether I understand the costs involved in making good content.
You complain about the cost of your attention while suggesting people spend their time building free stuff for you.
That seems incredibly tone deaf. Advertisers should be working on fixing the problems. Get rid of tracking, get rid of scripts, make promises about acceptable ad size and latency and every year reduce those numbers.
And when a network ad-spots start drying up, the advertisers will have to switch.
at least, that's how I'd hope it would work.
Ads aren't going away.
Fine by me. I'll simply mark it as the malware that it is and never return to that domain again.
> b) they will start including ads in ways that make ad blockers ineffective.
This technology already exists but its ignored because harvesting and selling user data is a cash cow. This is perfectly possible today...
<a href="someplace.com"><img src="/somead.png" /></a>
Many of us hope for option c - that publishers work with ad networks to fix some of the problems that drive people to ad blockers in the first place. Some people object to advertising no matter how it is done, but I think that's a relative small number of people. Most people will accept well-behaved ads.
Whether something is sustainable for content creators is not the users' concern, you don't go around worrying whether Walmart can make profit, why do you worry whether a random internet blogger can?
Their program (Server) may ask my program (Browser) to do things and my program may deny ANY request based on ANY criteria that I get to set. My program is under no obligation to do anything their program asks.
This is all perfectly reasonable and fair.
So would you suggest (or would you even use) AdBlockers identify themselves to the website (so I can write "if($_SERVER["AdBlocker]){echo "Sorry, see ads or leave}"?
Because there are adblock blockers, and people write _adblock-blocker-blockers_.
When you buy a magazine from Starbucks do you tell the clerk what part of the magazine you intend to read what what you intend to ignore? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. The clerk & publishers are well aware I may ignore or even rip out any or all of the magazine pages and the magazine is priced accordingly.
Give me a advertisement network which takes legal liability for what they advertise and follows local law, and we could start talking about what implicit deal exist when I visit a website. This mean no recording (data protection laws), no malware (anti-hacking laws), fair representation of the product, clear pricing, no alcohol, tobacco or advertisement towards minors, clear indication that its an advertisement, and the other rules that exist in advertisement laws here in Sweden. Tax laws involved are also always involved If there is a deal where service is provided in exchange for goods.
How do I know this without viewing ads that I don't agree to view?
> It is your attention which you are agreeing to trade for information or entertainment.
The ego required to tell people who are explicitly not agreeing to your terms that they are implicitly agreeing to your terms is appalling. Surely we can believe people when they tell us what they agree to.
> This is more commonly happening now. Then we all have to deal with people complaining about that. Taking up /my/ attention which they are refusing to pay for. Pay me for reading your posts.
You loaded this hacker news page with the intent of reading other users' posts.
I've never once loaded a page with the intent of viewing an ad.
If you don't want to view my posts, I'd be entirely fine with you writing a browser plugin that strips my posts from your page. Consume the content you want to consume, that's your prerogative.
Yeah, it's literally like that. I open a random webpage, wait a few seconds, and here they are. I visit my aunt, and don't even get to open the browser before BAM, ads everywhere!
They are free to take "counter measures". But that doesn't stop the fact that they are paying for both your time and the content.
Many times they also payed to make it hard for me to get to the content that I actually wanted. This is commonly known as SEO.
Because you want to consume what they've produced. That is how they are paying you.
You keep saying "I did not enter into any agreement" like it changes anything. It's juvenile.
What I do with that data isn't up to you. That includes viewing all, parts, or none of the information I received from your server. That especially includes deciding about what code gets executed on my machine.
If advertisers want to control what I am doing with the content I get, please find yourself a new protocol and DRM it to your hearts' content. Just leave the Web alone.
I didn't say it was.
So Facebook says that the foundation of the web is sending data to the server (such as cookies) and receiving information back.
Nowhere in the protocol does it say they can't track you. Ergo, tracking is perfectly legal and moral.
The foundation of the internet is that the server sends you data. Your browser happens to have a security hole and you got a virus.
Totally ethical and legal. Nowhere in the HTTP protocol does it say not to send viruses.
It is currently legal, but that doesn't imply that it's moral. Legality does not define morality.
> Nowhere in the HTTP protocol does it say not to send viruses.
Correct.
> Totally ethical and legal.
Sending a virus is patently unethical regardless of the transport mechanism. as for legality, see a lawyer about 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5).
I know. The examples were still factually incorrect straw-men.
> it must be legal and ethical to block them
That's the point; it is legal and ethical to use data that was voluntarily given. If you want control over how things are used, stop sending to everybody freely and require a contract.
> harass those who spend money on them.
Clicking a link isn't harassment.
You are making people lose money (not the malware adnetworks, not the trackers, but the guy buying advertisement) to prove a point to the ad-network (which is actually making money off this), I consider it close to harassment.
So now when you run this program, the two entities you're most against (Google for not having safe-ads) and the content website (for not working for free) are actually getting payed!
If you want to hurt Google, just block ads.
Yes, that is one of the intended goals.
> not the trackers, but the guy buying advertisement
Targeting the source of funding is often an effective strategy.
> {,malware} ad-network
> trackers
> guy buying advertisement
All of these are responsible, so they are all intended targets.
> I consider it close to harassment
If following a website's href suggestion to load a URL is "harassment", then advertising is also harassment.
That is not how the web works, and that is not the social contract that it was built on. Sorry if it doesn't fit advertisers' needs, but that is really not my problem. Maybe advertisers and payed content could go to some other medium that accommodates all the restrictions you desire, and then we can all be happy?
No such relationship exists.
You want something, they have something. You communicate your desire and they provide you with something. That is a relationship.
When I click a link, there is a relationship between me and some entity in the same sense that the term is used in computer science to describe relational databases.
This is not a relationship in the legal or ethical senses. By clicking a link, I did not agree to anything at all. All I did was react to an announcement that there is some resource somewhere, and deciding to take a look at it. If I decide to do it from a terminal and read the HTML directly without rendering, that is no one's business and my actions are not unethical in any way.
The advertisement industry is starting to behave like the music industry in the early days of the web. They are willing to destroy the best tool ever created for global human communication and knowledge sharing for the purpose of protecting an obsolete business model.
So I'm agreeing to the contract before even seeing the content? I guess you're fine with me having 30 days to return the content under the Consumer Rights Act (UK) if it's not as described and they'll refund me the advertising money they made from me, right?
Particularly, if you say it's a trade of content for attention, then:
For goods and services bought online, your rights are the same as if you'd bought them from a shop.
You can make a claim for a refund, repair or replacement when the digital content you've bought doesn't meet these three standards: [..]
Fit for purpose: You should be able to use it for what the seller says it will do (its purpose), whether that's their statement when you buy it, or an answer to your question. For instance, an audio track should play, and a game shouldn't infect your computer with a virus.
As described: It should match its description when you bought it. For example, a film should be in the format you chose when you bought it.
So an advert from CNN shouldn't infect my computer with malware, and a link which claims I "won't believe" something [2] should leave me in disbelief.
[1] http://www.rica.org.uk/content/consumer-rights
[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/02/world/gallery/astonishing-...
Yeah?
I get payed for my attention in euros, after signing a contract or entering an agreement. Maybe that sounds silly to you, but that is how I roll.
I assume that you are implying that I have some moral obligation to the people publishing publicly accessible content. If you are not implying that, then we are all in agreement and there is nothing further to discuss. We both agree that ad blockers are fine, case closed.
If you are implying that, you are wrong. The WORLD WIDE WEB was not built on that premise and we were here before the marketeers and advertisers arrived. If the former manage to make some money while providing people with something they want, that's fine. I have nothing against honest business. But don't try to pretend that I have any obligation to do anything just because I accessed a resource that you made public. If you want to charge for your resource, name the price and make it private. Maybe I'll buy it. I buy books all the time. But it's not my fault or moral failing if your business model doesn't work.
And I'm disagreeing, by analogy. That's how it's relevant.
Should the site be able to ask for a refund on their content since you didn't provide what they expected(ad views)?
Also valid, and also leads to the same conclusion: it's a nonsensical idea. Therefore one thing is not 'payment' for the other. There's one protocol that making a HTTP request returns content at the discretion of the server, and there's no advance agreement that the content has value, or that the client is agreeing to trade anything at all for the alleged value.
I didn't say you were legally bound to watch the ads at any point.
I didn't say you said I was, only that content is not payment for watching adverts - and that it would be daft if that was the case.
She may perhaps claim that we entered into an implied contract. Or the musician could post a placard reading her terms-of-service. But in simply walking down the street, like clicking on a link, it can't reasonably be claimed that I entered into a preconceived and negotiated contract where I agreed to payment for a service.
I'm not a personal fan of ads but when it comes to things I find important enough and have the option, I pay to remove them. The difference however is that the die-hards tend to not accept paying or viewing ads as acceptable. If they did, this wouldn't keep coming up.
Similarly, if I have no binding contract, it certainly can't be required of me to observe or respond to everything within the room. There is no origin for the musician's claimed right to oblige me to any commercial action.
these two are not even close to the same thing. clicking a link is a very specific action "show me this stuff". Your analogy would be more apt if it involved going into a venue where music is performed.
Is a fish obligated to swallow a hook that is cast into the ocean?? No reasonable fisherman would think this.
The web equivalent is a paywall.
Now, bars put on free music. And you can go to them and not buy a drink regardless that the landlord puts on the music to get you to buy.
The landlord might get paid to have advertising up, like on a toilet vending machine. But me choosing not to look at it isn't morally wrong.
Arguably, even if I never buy a drink I can benefit the establishment socially.
The problem comes when the establishment not only needs pay the workers and buy the beer but also pay the breweries management and return dividend to share holders.
The web has moved to that stage where the capitalists have moved in - like large breweries owning pubs. Forums aren't run by the admins they're owned by media conglomerates, etc.. I'm really not sure it's made the web a better place.
Now, get off my lawn.
If I connect to, say, port 80 on www.cnn.com and send some particular ASCII, then the machine on the other end will likely respond with some text. The owners of that machine invite these connections.
I can then: pipe that to /dev/null; read it in a text editor; read it with a web browser; print it out; file it away somewhere. (There are of course other options.)
So pray-tell, if my browser is `wget | html2txt | more`, do you consider me in the moral wrong for failing to also send various bits of PII to whomever CNN considers a Trusted Sponsor today and retrieve images, flash cruft, malware, or whatever else those Trusted Sponsors choose to respond with?
"In breach of implied contract?"
"Failing to respect social mores?"
"Doin' the wrong thing?"
I'm vastly less interested in quibbling about word choice than the underlying concepts being discussed.