Hacker News Reader

Comment by sidyapa | Hacker News Reader

This is a good move. Even though ads are annoying and frustrating at most times it is not anybody's birth-right to use a product/service for free and block their sources of revenue. If they have a pay-to-remove-ads option, use it.

View on HN

While I'm sure I'm in the minority, I absolutely do have the birthright to control what content appears on my device. If they want to prevent ads from being blocked, blocking me from using their service is 100% fine by me.

But that's not the same. You have the right to control your content, but that's not what's happening here. Presumably in this example you want to use Spotify (otherwise the whole conversation is moot) but they don't want to you circumvent how their service works. You're not the one controlling this situation, Spotify is.

Your statement sounds very akin to "fine, kick me out of this party I was clearly enjoying, I don't want to associate with these kind of people anyway..." which feels disingenuous.

I think you really just don't care that much about using spotify, which is a perfectly cromulent opinion.

The analogy doesn't seem right. It's more like you are at a party and the clown they hired goes on your face to yell something. You have the right to move away and enjoy the party elsewhere. And now they'll kick you out of the party if you don't allow the clown to yell at you, ok, I'll leave the party myself in that case.

more like they threw a party where you could pay a cover charge to get into the room with no clown or you could get in for free and know you had to deal with a clown. you decide to go in for free and just duck tap the clown's mouth shut because you felt you deserved to be at the party without paying and without having to deal with a clown.

This seems like the best way of describing it.

Except the clown paid to host the party with the caveat that they get to yell at people. It's their party that you're getting to enjoy for free. You tried to get the benefit without any cost despite he terms being known and now the clown is kicking you out as a result.

Not the person you're responding to. That's between the clown and whoever is hosting the party. Not my problem. I'm just avoiding having the clown yell in my face, given that I also know that the clown is malicious and pulls pranks on people sometimes. Sure, I have the option of buying a card that I can show the clown that will make him go away, but I'd rather just leave instead. There are plenty of other parties out there.

Or you pay the cover charge to get into the clown-free party?

> I think you really just don't care that much about using spotify

I think anybody that can say they "care a lot" about using Spotify pays for a subscription.

Have you found a way to block all the ads on your radio and TV too?

Should TV networks try to block you if you don't look at the TV while ads are running? Or if you turn it off/switch channel/mute it? Same goes for newspapers and magazines - do you have a right to skip pages filled with ads and not look at them?

...all the examples you gave are services you pay for. Spotify is preventing users from blocking ads on their free tier.

Not necessarily. There are free TV channels and free newspapers as well. Spotify is trying to prevent people from choosing which data packets will their devices process or not. Which is exactly the same as a publisher trying to prevent you from not looking at a page with ads, or cutting it out. In my opinion, users have a right of modifying anything they get - whether free or paid, which includes processing and filtering data that comes to their devices.

Broadcast TV is a thing...

No, just like Spotify doesn't ban you for turning off the audio during commercials or looking away from the screen.

The only difference between turning off the audio and ad blocking is at which point the data gets blocked. Turning off the audio means that it gets filtered by your phone's audio processing system. Ad blocking means it gets blocked on the network level.

If you install software into your TV that blocks the ads, then they should be able to boot you off. You have a right to not listen or pay attention to ads. However, you bring up a good point with the magazines example. That opens up a whole new can of worms.

Brings to mind the series 1 second episode of Black Mirror.

I see the user as free to modify their client. On the same note spotify is not obliged to serve 3rd party or out of spec clients.

Absolutely, they have right not to serve any customer they don't want to serve. But do they have a right of tracking your actions? How would you react if there was an employee of any broadcast TV station peeking through your window to see if you're avoiding ads on their channel, and if they determine you avoid the ads, install a broadcast signal jammer near your house?

I don't like the increasingly intrusive behaviors from big tech companies, and this case with free Spotify is a good example. If they can't provide a free service without privacy intrusions, they shouldn't offer it. Radios and broadcast TV survive on ad-based model without privacy intrusions.

I have no beef with ads in general. But I do have a concern for user tracking. If the ads are just ads - then that is all fine and well. However, most if not all of these so called ads are tracking users across services and devices. Then 'enriching' that data with more data from other sources and selling that information about me to whoever wants it.

I think privacy is what the majority of people who use these blockers are trying to get. I know that is the reason I use ad blockers at least. I do have a right to privacy, and the amount of information advertisers can learn about me though meta data is a serious violation of that privacy. Unfortunately with targeted advertising, then line between ads and tracking has disappeared, they are one and the same. And yes, I am aware that a lot of advertisers allow you to disable targeted ads- however they still collect the same amount of information, they just claim not to use it for their ad choices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com