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Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

It's totally unclear to me why you think this should be considered bad behavior.

Imagine a grocery store has a promotion - you can get a loaf of bread for free if you listen to a twenty minute advertising presentation. Does this justify not going to the presentation, and just stealing the bread?

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You go to the presentation and someone demands you empty your pockets into a bowl that they will take into another room while you watch the presentation, wallet, phone, keys, etc.... You decline and leave, but you already ate the bread! Did you steal it?

No. That's analogous to choosing to leave Spotify after you already listened to some music because you decide you don't like their ads. Which is fine.

I'd say it's more akin to using Spotify with an ad blocker before this change. If Spotify wants to switch to only handing out bread after the presentation obviously that's fine too, but it doesn't make the whole proposition any less shady.

But in this analogy you don’t leave - you stay and keep eating bread. Because that’s exactly what people with ad blockers are doing on Spotify.

Well this would have to be a special kind of bread where the inventory amount does not change when a loaf is consumed.

Bear in mind, this loaf can also only be eaten inside of the grocery store. You cannot leave the store with the bread, because it is welded to the infrastructure of the grocery.

Not paying for a gym membership would be a better example. You're using up available capacity without giving the gym a way to monetize your presence there.

A better analogy is a protection racket: pay up or we'll serve ads that might contain malware to your device. If Spotify took responsibility for fixing my computer when it gets a worm from an ad, we'd have a deal that is much more fair.

Nothing forces you to use Spotify.

Absolutely, not using Spotify is better option. My original comment was arguing against "just pay for it" being a good outcome, as it relates to Spotify's future incentives.

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