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Comment by pretzel | Hacker News Reader

It's not a contract to which I've agreed though. If they want me to get content in exchange for something, then they should make sure I do, otherwise, they are putting things on an open server that I can easily read from. What I tell my browser to take from it is up to me,

Would you have a problem with me reading the site in lynx?

You could enforce a contract by having a paid for membership, as he alludes to, which gives you rights to see articles early or have post rights on a forum or gives you some physical thing.

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>It's not a contract to which I've agreed though. If they want me to get content in exchange for something, then they should make sure I do, otherwise, they are putting things on an open server that I can easily read from. What I tell my browser to take from it is up to me,

You are conflating the practical ability to do something with the moral right to do something.

The fact that something cannot be enforced is a practical problem, not a moral one. A rural car-park owner may have no practical method to force people using his car park to leave money in an honesty box [1]. His request for payment may have no legal standing. Neither of these points has any influence on the moral value of not leaving the requested payment.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honesty_box

What makes using an honesty-box moral? It is not that one side has dictated the terms.

Imagine finding an empty car-park, parking your car, approaching the honesty-box and finding a note declaring the owner does not expect money but instead expects to be paid in teeth: and would the car-park users please pull-out a tooth and deposit it. Would that be moral?

Yes, one could say it is moral to all follow a general rule of reciprocating, of giving something as well as receiving. But what and how much?

The morality of cooperative interaction is not about what one person wants, it is about how all are affected.

Saying what exact actions and amounts would be moral is in general an impossible calculation. But what would clearly not be moral is one party dictating to the other. Once you deliberately offer to engage in cooperative interaction you alone no longer set the rules.

You bring up good points. But I'm still not sure about the 'not a contract to which I've agreed' part. Couldn't it be argued that there exists an open understanding by all parties that the content creation is sustained purely through ads -- and all site visitors are softly agreeing to these general terms upon site access?

The entire thesis of my post had nothing to do with a benign willingness to block or unblock ads. I block ads simply because I am sick of all the things I mentioned in my OP. The point is that they stepped over lines that I feel should not be crossed and I blocked them because they disrespected me. I would posit that many people are sick of it and any non-tech person could easily open google and ask "How do I stop all these irritating ads on websites?" and they will be taken to adblock.

Obviously, advertising is a service, but if sites learned to tone it down instead of money-grabbing and causing a miserable experience for their readership, they should actually be thankful for adblocks. Without adblocks, many people would simply click the back-button, cause their bounce rate to go through the roof, they drop off the front page of google, and they would have no views to brag about to advertisers.

> Couldn't it be argued that there exists an open understanding by all parties that the content creation is sustained purely through ads -- and all site visitors are softly agreeing to these general terms upon site access?

No. Absolutely not.

What about an older browser that can't properly display javascript? What about someone using a screenreader? What about when I use Lynx from a terminal window?

There is no implied relationship. There is no contract. A website hands me a block of text and I can choose which text to render.

Something like 92% of browsers support javascript. Fuck off with this stupid, trite red herring.

You want content. You are not owed content.

> You want content. You are not owed content.

Then put it behind a paywall.

It's my browser, my choice to display what I want, how I want. You don't come into the equation, even if you are the content owner. Either charge for it, or stop whining.

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