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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

It's not any kind of contract. A contract (even an unwritten "social" one) implies at the very least some kind of agreement, some meeting of the minds. There is no meeting of the minds on the web: Your browser simply says "Hey, give me this content," then the server says, "Here's what I'd like you to show," and finally the browser decides what out of that stream of bytes gets shown. There's no agreement by the user in that conversation, not even an implied one. The site can decide whether or not to reply, whether or not to send anything, and the user agent then decides what to show. There's no contract.

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>Your browser simply says "Hey, give me this content,"

The technical details do not matter. Social contacts are about societal expectations, not about your personal ones. Do you think a thief has a meeting of the minds about not stealing something from a shop keeper? It's not the theifs world view that matters here. Similar to your example the physics of the world say it's possible for a human to pick up an item without paying for it, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

I disagree that there is a societal expectation in this case. If I request HackerNews, it will start sending me bytes. There is no societal expectation around what I do with those bytes. Maybe I'll have my browser render them as-is. Maybe I'll strip out the HTML and render them as plain text in a green 80x24 terminal. Maybe I'll drop every second character and print out the result as wall art.

Or (back on topic) when I'm watching cable TV and they send an ad over the wire. There's no societal expectation that I watch that ad. I could hit the mute button. I could get up to take a piss or grab a beer. I could record the broadcast and watch it later, fast forwarding through the ads.

This is not like a store where there's a clear societal expectation that I don't go in and rob them. I don't think anyone would equate leaving the sofa during a commercial with robbery.

>There is no societal expectation around what I do with those bytes

Yes, there is. If you had a group of 100 people and asked what google.com should look like and showed them how Chrome renders the page and your 80x24 modification does that all 100 would say that yours is not expected. You are still too hung up on these technical details of how things are implemented than how the average person thinks of these things.

We are all very fortunate that the world is not limited to what the average person thinks things should be like.

A consensus answer to "what should google.com look like?" does not suggest or imply any sort of "social contract".

There is not, and has never been, a social contract that says I have to look at the ads served with any website. If you think there is, then I'm sorry, but you're sorely mistaken.

Similarly, there is no social contract that says I have to watch commercials while I'm watching TV (not that I've watched linear TV in over a decade, but...). I can mute it, change the channel, go to the bathroom, whatever. If you think there is, then I'm not sure what to tell you; your opinions on this are so outside the mainstream that we're not going to see eye-to-eye on this.

>does not suggest or imply any sort of "social contract"

We were talking about societal expectations.

>I can mute it, change the channel, go to the bathroom, whatever.

You are free to do the same for websites. You can click the x button on the ad, mute the video ad, or change to a different website.

We are also free to install adblockers.

But then you are breaking the social contact.

We are rejecting your assertion that it ever existed or should exist.

My browser already automatically mutes video ads on my behalf. And an ad blocker effectively "clicks the X button" for me. Sometimes I don't even scroll down far enough to see an ad. How is one of those activities breaking the social contract and others not? Or are they all breaking the social contract? Or none of them? I have no idea because I don't know who's defining the terms of this social contract.

All 100 would agree that the website looks better without ads, unless their paycheck came from them.

And those that disagreed would still think it in their heads.

And 100 people would agree that Apple selling them an iPhone for free is better than them charging $1000 for it.

People like free stuff.

So you agree that there is no societal expectation to view ads when you can get away with not doing so.

If there is no meeting of minds, why are you going to websites? You go to websites to see information that was in someone else's mind and load it into your mind.

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