Using an adblocker is like stealing candy from the store...
They can handle some theft, but if literally everyone stole their candy, the store would close down and nobody can have candy.
They can handle some theft, but if literally everyone stole their candy, the store would close down and nobody can have candy.
Also, the store isn't freakishly stalking me and noting down all my habits whilst sharing what it has collected with its friends, or indeed anyone who will buy the data.
Besides, candy is impossible to replicate in the same way that data is. Theft of physical objects is a materially different act from advert blocking and avoidance. I'm not obligated to view adverts in every public space because they fund the local government. I'm not denied access to the cinema because I arrive 10 minutes after the start time to avoid the adverts. Or back in the day when I taped TV shows and fast-forwarded the adverts, had I a responsibility to view them?
They're useless noise that contribute no value to anyone beyond whoever pays for them, and therefore I find it a moral responsibility to limit my exposure to them and restrain the harm they do to others. And curiously, I am much more content and much less impulsive in my spending habits since I installed uBlock.
Many retail stores do, actually, through wireless tracking, cameras, and/or purchase history. They will buy and sell consumer data through the likes of Acxiom.
It would be great to have a ublock equivalent for the physical world.
No one is under any obligation to accept advertising. Only since the modern web have advertisers and content providers made this an argument on ethics.
We could all go around in circles like this for hours.
I'm not really sure what crowd of us you think claims that ad-blocking is "morally responsible". I certainly don't see it as a moral issue at all. I just don't want so see ads, period. I think they're psychologically manipulative garbage, and I don't want them in front of my eyes, infecting my brain.
If someone wants to publish something behind a paywall, I'll pay if I think it's worth the price. If someone wants to put up an ad-blocker-blocker and refuse to serve that content to me, that's fine too; I'll live without their content.
If a server is going to send me bits over the wire, I am going to decide how I view those bits, and which bits I do and do not want to see.
It's a bad metaphor, a better metaphor would be reading a journal and covering ads with post it notes.
Nobody frames, say, taking a bathroom break when the ads play during a football game this way.
One might argue that you are then not entitled to view the content on ad-supported pages as well.
I use an ad blocker too because many ads are just horribly intrusive, but I honestly can’t blame any page circumventing ad blockers, nor do I believe that I am somehow morally entitled to an ad-free, compensation-free browsing experience.
Narrowing all of this down to CPU time misses the point entirely in my opinion.
> They're useless noise that contribute no value to anyone beyond whoever pays for them, and therefore I find it a moral responsibility to limit my exposure to them and restrain the harm they do to others.
They‘re literally paying for the content you get to view for free.
This is true, and websites are entitled to try to detect and block users who use adblockers. And users are entitled to use better adblockers that are harder to detect.
Then they shouldn't serve the page in a way that it can be viewed without also viewing the ads. Ad-blocker-blockers are a thing, and I am happy to close that tab and never visit the site again when I see one.
> They‘re literally paying for the content you get to view for free.
Hopefully someday they'll be forced to find a business model that doesn't include destroying the privacy of their website's visitors.
I suggest you are incorrect to assert that "no one is entitled to my CPU time." I agree, however, that advertisers do not have that moral claim right.
> I suggest you are incorrect to assert that "no one is entitled to my CPU time."
Very well, please elaborate. I'm always up to delve deeper into reason and philosophy (time-permitting of course).
I'll start with ~~a humorous point for an autistic person~~ the worst kind of pedantry. An object cannot be no one's and mine at the same time. If I own it, then it isn't no one's. To the degree the CPU is indeed yours, then it is someone's CPU. Obviously, there's some conversational implicature embedded in your claim here, and that's what we're here to clarify.
For the record, I'm on your side. Your overall argument is something everyone needs to hear. So, I'm not here to destroy your assertion, but I think it should be weakened. There's a lot packed in there.
I take your proposition to mean, roughly, that the CPU in your possession is something only you have a cluster of moral claim rights to (which corresponds to a cluster of moral obligations of others to you regarding that CPU), with no possibility of overriding reasons, caveats, or provisos. Now, you could be speaking about political claim rights, but I don't think that's the case here (correct me if I'm wrong). Is that a fair interpretation, and do you wish to maintain that? Can you think of any exceptions? Are there any adjacent possible worlds in which that is not the case?
Perhaps it is time for an advertising model to die out as the default.
I will not render your ads. I’d be happy to put that in the first http request to your site. If that means no site for me, then quite honestly 90% of my browsing is a waste of time anyway.
They encourage people to believe their self worth is linked to the things they own. That a persons status in society is somehow associated with how much money they have to spend.
Who's pretending? Ads naturally and quite effectively price-discriminate, and so they do make internet content cheaper for people with less money.
You may have problems with excessive consumption, but many people in developing countries do not. They desperately need the free content (educational, informative, and otherwise) that the current internet model provides them.
Well funded public broadcasters like Australia ABC provide news and entertainment content free. (both text and video)
Well funded public libraries can provide a wide range of alternate content.
While I love libraries and public broadcasting, I learned to code as a poor kid through library books, they are not the full solution and they never provided free, instant, and any time international communication for people.
If websites really find that ad blockers are killing their revenue, they will switch to a paywall model, and maybe micropayments will finally happen (or perhaps a service that allows users to subscribe to large numbers of websites at a time). Whether or not that is a good thing depends on who you ask.
These reductionist approaches don‘t really help with understanding ads (and communication in general).
However, I do run an ad blocker and I'm completely fine if every company that relies on ads for income goes out of business. In fact, I'd appreciate it.