With web ad blockers you protect against tracking, privacy violations and potentially malware and thus don't see "unacceptable ads". In contrast this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads.
Ads are malicious. It's perfectly fine to block them. Privacy protection is just a convenient side effect.
At the same time, I think most ads aren't malicious. They aren't "intending to do harm". Ads sell things. Sometimes things people want. I'd guess that most people who use ad blockers just don't like being sold things.
I am happy to be sold things, on my own terms. I don't need ads to find out about things to buy.
Also, it's not "unsolicited" when you made the choice to turn on the radio and turn up the volume. If you don't like the ads, turn the radio off.
> I am happy to be sold things, on my own terms.
I'm pretty sure everyone is happy with everything, when they define their own terms.
GP isn't getting PTSD, but ads here are like mosquitos. A few here and there you won't notice, but once there's lots of them buzzing around and biting, the quality of life goes down very quick.
As for unsolicited - they are. They are a malicious third party injecting itself where it isn't welcome. Also, be it TV or radio, ads weren't supposed to be there. This is where the infectious nature of advertising shows. They came and took over these media, and dragged their quality down.
I've always had a problem with this, who thought it was a good idea to allow large colourful structures literally designed to capture the attention of people operating heavy machinery next to places where they are travelling at high speeds?
Which advertising relaated business are you in?
This is pretty much exactly what the OP project does.
They do this by preying on insecurities and making you feel less valuable and incomplete. Another tactic is either outright lying about the product, or constructing statements where a reasonable person would "fill in the gaps" to produce the lie they intend, even if they don't explicitly state it. Closely study some ads sometimes, they are incredibly psychologically manipulative.
This is before such considerations as privacy, tracking and data leaks with online advertisement, and the general idea that advertising is a zero sum game, and the only way to "beat" your competitor at it is to blow even more money on it, thus its a massive economic inefficiency, advertising doesn't create value, it merely shifts it around.
While advertisement is rarely actively malicious in a targeted way, they are a systematic evil much like pollution, everyone would be better off if it didn't exist in the first place.
Also, study the 101 of the domain. Like the famous Cialdini's book Influence: Science and Practice, or Cliff Ennico's How To Sell Anything To Anybody talks. Moral bankrupcy is in the very DNA of the practice, so no surprise that most ads just reflect this.
Ironic you'd bring up ethics in a discussion of ad blockers. Considering how radio & podcasts depend on sponsorship, isn't it unethical to remove ads that pay for the content? Effectively it is stealing.
https://current.org/2019/09/podcast-sponsorship-revenues-con...
I believe ad blocking is ethically justified on the grounds that it's just defending yourself from other's unethical behavior, and that you're entitled to do so - claiming otherwise would imply you're supposed to be forced to sit through entirety of a performance. That would be absurd invasion of your autonomy.
Also note that you are not paying radio hosts/podcast authors through advertisements. The ad network is. The exact payout structure is complicated and agreed upon without involving me the listener, but it boils down to parties speculating that a fraction of ad impressions will turn into eventual boost in sales, and money flowing from advertisers, through networks, to publishers, based on that expectation. At no point was I consulted in this, so I feel no obligation towards participating in whatever deals these parties set up between themselves - doubly so given that I'm being harmed by those deals.
You've captured my issue right in this place. Ads sometimes sell things people want. All the other times are what I consider doing harm.
I think there were some legal rulings IIRC in the UK regarding software to auto mute/block/skip ads on TV/Radio, but for the life of my can't find them.
If it was ruled illegal, then it being "perfectly fine to block them" might be correct ethically but not legally, although I suspect the details of implementation might be the important point.
I'll often find myself turning the radio down to the second-lowest volume it goes, so I can turn it back up when there's actual music. Equally often I turn it down and then forget about it for the rest of the trip. Honestly, a trip in silence is sometimes preferable to one where I have to micro-manage the volume knob, let alone one where I have to listen to radio ads.
Personally I mute or switch channels as soon as the commercials start and I've actually turned down at least one job offer because they had radio on the office floor.
Too little variety, no real local personality, basically none of the things radio was great at doing.
When I'm in the car now, it's all a mix of public radio/podcasts for news and discussion and Shoutcast-type streaming radio for music. I do sometimes pull up specific stuff from my personal uploaded music collection on Google Play Music or find something else I want to hear on YouTube, etc. but not often.
The funny thing is that I've found more streaming "radio" stations that do a better job of (the things I liked about) radio than actual radio stations do. It dropped off a lot since the '00s when the cost of legally running a station skyrocketed but it still beats the endless Clear Channel wasteland on the FM dial.
Content on the internet powered by ads is almost entirely content made to distract people. Cutting it of my life is only doing me good. Until everything decides to block me, I'll just be blocking ads because I hate them and the industry behind them.
When your political beliefs are at odds with the current legal framework, you have no choice but to compromise to some degree. That doesn't mean you don't actually believe what you claim.
It's easy for us to use adblockers as the minority of technical users, but that's a privilege based on the other 90% still seeing them (which I personally see nothing wrong with and clearly most publishers dont want to poke the bear either).
Otherwise of course people would love to have everything free plus no ads. But ads built and paid for a lot of good things on the internet, which wouldn't have been possible had they all expected payment or other models.
I'm all for pushing Google et al to be less aggressive with ads and make the web more usable and not requiring adblockers in order to have basic performance. But I don't disparage advertising as a whole because I understand the tradeoffs.
Anyway, paying for ad-free and surveillance-free experience is increasingly not possible, as companies try to double-dip.
If you honestly believe this about podcasts running ads, then why are you listening to them at all!?
Businesses do not communicate between themselves using obnoxious language. Business letters are stereotypically formal. They reserve the brash language of advertising for their potential customers, and those subjected to it are within their rights to point out this hypocrisy.
Don't defend advertisers. They are vampires. Don't mournfully look upon them and proclaim, "Even these wretches must eat." Plenty of jobs need doing. Advertising is not, never has been, and never will be one of them.
Why is the onus on me to defend what software I run on hardware I own?
Frankly, I don't care whether people think it's defensible or not. If something's only purpose is to waste my time and sell me shit I don't need I will use every possible solution (whether technical, legal - GDPR complaints, etc - or else) to get rid of it and make my life better.
Maybe instead of thinking whether blocking/skipping ads is defensible, we should ask ourselves why as a society we are accepting having an industry whose only mission is to waste as much of humanity's time as possible while manipulating them to do things against their best interest?
Resisting psychological manipulation by entities that don't want the best for you remains highly defensible.
Media creators want what's best for the hand that feeds them.
Both advertisers and mediums that host advertisements are subjecting me to messages that are intentionally designed to influence my behavior, often in ways that 1) I did not ask for, and would not elect given a choice 2) are misleading 3) are interruptive or otherwise undermine the utility of whatever I'm watching/listening to.
There's a similar justification/motive outlined on the main site https://www.adblockradio.com/en/
"Do you have ugly crooked yellow teeth..." Why do we need to tell people that crooked teeth are inherently ugly. This sort of add is the reason we have girls under 10 worrying about getting braces when their dentist never even mentioned the idea and who are whitening their teeth.
Not all are that bad, and some ads exist just to inform. But given that someone doesn't know until they have already had to listen to the ad, it makes simple enough to justify.
I don't like ads either but remember there are multiple perspectives here. We should focus on purging bad actors than the entire practice. For now though, I see ad blockers as the tools of change and fully support them.
Currently, once a few businesses in the market start using refined-sugar type ads everyone else has to or they die. I want legislation that only allow ads that are the fruit kind, not the refined-sugar kind. Until that happens, I will block all ads.
At the moment everyone "needs" ads because everyone else does it. If this cancer would disappear then everyone is on a level playing field and can attract business by ranking well on search engines, etc.
I like to picture it like this: if everyone around you is shouting through a bullhorn, you have to use a bullhorn too just to have a shot at being heard by the person next to you. But how about taking away everyone's bullhorns? Suddenly, people would have a chance to have an actual conversation.
A floor needs to be put, to stop the ethical race to the bottom, and that floor needs to be put way above where advertising industry currently is.
I think there is an issue here because people are talking about different kinds of ads.
A new restaurant putting an ad out that lets people know what the attraction of the new restaurant is (the first Hispanic Sushi bar in town) is not a problem at all (to me, anyways). But if you listen to ads you will find that many don't fall into that category. Political ads are a big example, but also many ads for cosmetic surgery and weight loss. The ads for scams are some of the worst (though generally those last only a few days per scam). Ads for gold that try to scare people into making investment decisions that aren't likely in their best interest are another example.
If ads self policed themselves better perhaps people wouldn't be so set on blocking them.
How are new products and inventions supposed to create word of their existence? As a musician I see ads for new VSTs and instruments or accessories all the time I’ve never heard of, and affect my workflow in a massively significant and positive way.