Lea Verou: “AdBlock is morally equivalent to theft IMO” | Hacker News Reader

Lea Verou: “AdBlock is morally equivalent to theft IMO”

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7 pointsokey14 comments

That means going to the bathroom during a commercial on TV is also theft.

I have an idea: get a better business model instead of thinking you're going to be rich selling advertising on the internet.

I really hope that this view isn't widespread amongst W3C people. "Controlling what HTTP reqs my device sends is morally wrong because the server owner expects to monetise them" is absurd.

OK then, your website and the ad-networks are now CRIMINALLY LIABLE for any and all malicious code that arrives on my computer through them, so that if some ransomware destroys my files you will pay me to cover damages.

Sound like a good start?

Maybe later we can talk about you compensating me for how any of your badly-behaved ads degrade my service on other sites by burning CPU cycles, using outsize amounts of connections and bandwidth.

.. And that's not even touching the whole confidentiality/privacy aspect.

FYI, this is interesting because of who the tweet is coming from. About the author:

> I’m currently a Research Assistant at MIT CSAIL, in David Karger’s Haystack group and an Invited Expert in the W3C CSS Working Group.

Unfortunately, reading the whole conversation does not give much insight as to the logic behind this moral claim. It's just asserted. The author takes it as self-evident that viewing ads is the cost of visiting some websites.

There are people who think advertising is morally equivalent to theft of other people's time and attention. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I do believe that AdBlock lets me get more out of the Web by eliminating the constant cognitive background noise produced by ads.

I believe in paying people. Just let me directly pay them for things that I actually think I need, and I will.

Meanwhile, I'm going to continue to uBlock sites that don't respect my need for keeping garbage out of my mind.

Imagine the Internet if it were Sao Paulo...how beautiful it would be.

I am curious, is he willing to compensate me in case I am infected through ads on my PC/mobile, can he protect my online life from advertisers monitoring and tracking my movements, or any other similar direct or indirect malicious case?

Edit: Also, I believe I have not been informed by a single site ever, saying that "This site uses ads as a revenue source, in case you disagree with the method please move on." Usually it just shaves those ads down my browser and if I don't like it, apparently 'I am the thief'.

I agree with her completely and didn't use adblock until ~6 months ago. But, the click bait "one weird trick" and "you'll never believe what XYZ did to ABC" horseshit ads made me crack. I just couldn't deal with seeing that nonsense anymore. I'd be happy to do micropayments, but at this point it looks unlikely to happen.

You agree that when viewing a public site whose main revenue model is ads, you enter an implicit contract to view those ads? If so, why? If not, why do you agree that being selective about what HTTP reqs you make is morally equivalent to theft just because the site owner expects you not to be and hopes to gain money off that?

Because they--content providers in general--continue to violate all sorts of implicit conditions of the "implicit contract".

The "implicit contract" says they shouldn't be attacking my computer with malware or attacking me with scams.

The "implicit contract" says the ads for a single page should not "take over" the rest of my computing-experience with stuff like auto-playing sound.

The "implicit contract" says one site's ads should not be part of a global panopticon secretly spying on my internet-wide activity through a thousand sources.

The "implicit contract" says the ads should not drastically change the page-loading time or cause the experience to stutter.

I believe at least 90% of all ad-blocking is attributable to these systematic violations of the users' trust.

Ah, I wanted to know why viggity agreed with Lea, not for a list of reasons to use ad-block, but you make some good points... although I disagree about the presence of an implicit contract in the first place.

Plenty of people think this. Let's not pick on any one specifically.

Since we're making ridiculous claims here:

If AdBlock is morally equivalent to theft, having a business model where you have no legal protection against working for free is functionally equivalent to idiocy.

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