Comment by pudquick | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pudquick | Hacker News Reader

People are publishing content on the internet without putting it behind a login/password/restricted access.

Not only are they publishing it, they're announcing its presence on social media, performing "search engine optimizations", and cross-promoting it on other non-web technologies (radio, tv, printed media, etc.).

... At no point, as a consumer of this content, did I get presented with so much as a simple "In return for consuming this content, you agree that you will look at the ads being shown here".

I also haven't agreed to such things for cable tv or radio - but guess what? I don't generally consume those media products, in large part because the formats are linear and full of "unskippable" ads.

Nothing is stopping the web from moving to this format. There are many sites out there that present an interstitial of some sort before moving onto the main content. And every time I end up on one of those sites, if my ad blocker isn't dealing with it somehow, I generally remember and avoid visiting the next time.

If you want me to pay for the web content that you're publishing because that's the business model you've decided on, be up front and attempt to get a paid agreement from me. Or deal with the fact that I'm part of the audience that doesn't look at the ads in print media, mutes or skips channels on TV, and installs ad blockers for the web.

If an ad comes on the radio, I usually change the station. During TV commercials, I mute and do something else. There's nothing that compels me to sit through the ads to listen to the music or watch the television show. Similarly, I have no problem with "skipping", or blocking, ads.

Some may not want to deal with the bandwidth required to keep an ad-blocking loop running at all times. They get a default penalty of having to suffer ads, without actively having signed on for it.

>... At no point, as a consumer of this content, did I get presented with so much as a simple "In return for consuming this content, you agree that you will look at the ads being shown here".

Isn't it common knowledge that many sites rely on ads for their revenue? Sit-down restaurants in the U.S. don't tell you as you walk in that you're expected to tip, but it's common knowledge that wait staff aren't paid minimum wage because customers are expected to tip. Yet, it's generally considered rude to not tip even though it's even easier than installing an ad blocker and restaurants won't refuse you service, whereas some websites try to block ad blockers.

Edit: Added last sentence.

> Sit-down restaurants in the U.S. don't tell you as you walk in that you're expected to tip, but it's common knowledge that wait staff aren't paid minimum wage because customers are expected to tip.

That's also something the rest of the world scratches its head about. I'm not sure the best way to make your point is to use an example of how absurd the US is.

American tipping isn't a particularly good system, but it's unkind to not tip if it means cheating the wait staff out of their wages.

Similarly, ads have issues, but blocking them is not fair to the creator, who reasonably expected ad impressions in exchange for creating the content and paying for visitors' traffic.

Then why dont you lobby for the government to raise minimum wages for waiters.

We don't tip because their min wage is so low, their minimum wage is so low because we tip.

Tipping is a cultural thing. And practically wait staff make much more from tips than they would if they were paid hourly by their employers.

But isnt it some kind of circular logic to say that, waiters are paid less (by restaurants) because it is common knowledge that they are tipped. And customers must tip, because, they are paid less by their employers. Dont you think it would be simpler if there was no expectation of tips. You know what I think, its the employers who are getting away with cheap labour. It is like some companies that have a variable pay included in the offer, over which the employee has no control.

> it's unkind to not tip if it means cheating the wait staff out of their wages.

Very likely "unkind", but I categorically reject your framing of it as "cheating by the customer".

The practical and ethical responsibility for a livable wage lies with the employer, even if your specific state's laws permit them to violate it.

The real culprits are (collectively) the lawmakers and their donors, who allow this "race to the bottom", followed by the employers who benefit every day from the workers' powerlessness.

Or, to put it another way: "Donate cash to my salaried employee out of pity, so I don't have to pay them for their actual work! If you don't do it, they'll starve and it'll be all your fault!"

Note: That's true only for a minority of the US' individual states.

Every cafe and restaurant in Australia is upfront about the cost of their service and food. I don't think that your example of tipping is a very good one because the rest of the world doesn't operate like that, it's a very American centric view.

I agree with the OP. The content creator was not upfront about wanting money and used adverts, and we are within our right to say no, I'm not lowering myself to watch this advert.

It's time we accept that adverts are not the solution.

In addition, is it just me or are most adverts just crap and garbage that lower the overall experience every time?

I'm in Australia at the moment. Just a couple things I find refreshing, besides a generally more laid back attitude about a lot of trivialities:

* No tipping. Employers are required to pay a living wage. ($17-21/hour, depending on some factor)

* Sales tax is included in the price. No "add x% at the register" crap.

> it's common knowledge that wait staff aren't paid minimum wage because customers are expected to tip

"Common"? No it isn't. ~65% of Americans live in states where that would be ILLEGAL, and those employers would be committing the crime of wage-theft.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm

Maybe the real problem is your state's laws.

As the sage once said, "your failed business model is not my problem". If someone wants to spend time and money making stuff and instructing a web server to give it away for free, on the gamble that people who want that stuff might also download a bunch of ads, it is not my responsibility to ensure that their gamble pays off by acting according to their predictions.

I don't know about where you are, but your state's (failure of a) business model is not my concern.

Where I am, at the very least, wait staff are required to be paid minimum wage, like (almost) everyone else.

The ironic thing is that many of the same people who complain about ads also complain about paywalls.

This is not necessarily ironic. For example, most of the content producers that I fund are the ones which make their media available as open to the public (e.g. wikipedia, democracynow.org, tvo.org). This is a model that I encourage.

Sounds like you would not consider it unethical to exploit a flaw in a website that allowed you to order products without paying. After all, the website is public, and you weren't asked not to exploit the flaw...

Nice strawman.

Nowhere did I imply that. Everything I mentioned was webpage reading/viewing content that the publishers themselves announced across the world, hoping to get readers - who in turn would view their ads.

You claim that you were never presented with an agreement that the content is provided in return for you viewing the ads, and yet you're very clearly aware that's the deal being offered, as you state here.

My point is that your argument is ludicrous. "What, these people that have been promoting their stuff everywhere have advertising on their site?". It's not like it's unexpected. The idea that each website would have to get your consent to show you ads is outright silly.

I don't have a problem with people using adblockers (I use NoScript myself, which has a similar effect), but let's not pretend that it's some kind of ethical action you're taking; that because a website hasn't entered into a formal contract to show you ads, that it's ethically fair that you block them.

And while you didn't imply the situation I described, that situation is using the same arguments you are using - "it's public" and "I wasn't asked not to".

I'm not a party to the contract between the advertiser and the content provider. In principle, I don't necessarily even have an expectation that a given content provider uses advertising revenue to support the provision of their content — they may use a subscription-based revenue model, and offer some number of "free" page views per day/week/month/whatever, as a teaser to encourage new subscriptions. They may just have stupendously deep pockets and like providing that content out of the goodness of their hearts.

Whatever; doesn't matter.

To make the leap from "I chose to view that page" to "I chose to view the ads on that page" is specious and unsupported, and I'm under no obligation whatsoever to enter into an agreement between two other parties on the basis that they happen to have a standing agreement.

To suggest otherwise is tantamount to suggesting that because I chose to walk down a specific street at a specific time, I somehow also chose to see a specific dude taking a specific dump.

I can promise you, I didn't. Just as with ads on the web, however, my consent is apparently not a factor in this equation.

(Why, yes, I do live in San Francisco. How ever did you guess?)

EDIT: And, yes, before you judge or jump to conclusions: I do have paid, auto-renewing subscriptions on subscription-model websites, and I use ad and tracker blocking plugins. It's not my fault that some of the sites I view have chosen (what I think are) shitty revenue models.

Actually, I don't think it's a fair point to say that "I chose to view the ads on that page" is specious and unsupported at all. Those ads are part of the markup and makeup of that page.

But that's exactly my point: without loading an arbitrary page, I can't know whether or not there are ads embedded in its markup.

If a page's headers could somehow tell me, "Hey! This page has ads! Do you still want to load it?", and I choose to continue viewing the page, then I've consented.

Absent that kind of exchange, I am in principle being involuntarily subject to unwanted content.

The same is true of every element on the page, from the menu system to the related articles box. Shall we have headers for every single element on a page?

Navigation elements are an expected, and rather essential part of a site's functionality.

Ads aren't — as ad-blocking software perfectly demonstrates: the day a site legitimately doesn't work (in the sense of being unnavigable, or somehow otherwise unable to be utilized in the way its creators intended, irrespective of its revenue model) because advertising content — which someone has chosen to include in order to monetize my eyeballs — doesn't load, then maybe you'll have an argument.

It's as simple as this: ads, if they're on a page, aren't what induced me to view that page. If the stuff that does draw me to a given page doesn't work, that's a problem. If ads don't load, my (personal) experience of the page is, in fact, improved. How exactly is that a problem, again?

Navigation elements beyond a spacebar and hyperlinks aren't essential. And probably PageUp. From websites of the 90's to today's product pages, there are plenty of websites that only require a spacebar and links to get around - no fancy dropdown menus or related article boxes.

Example, I've just been looking at https://www.consul.io/ - no menus, no special boxes. All you need is a spacebar to navigate the page, and you click on links to go to other pages. It's perfectly workable - fancy geegaws are not essential to navigate the site. Just like not all sites have ads, neither to all sites have drop-down menus and similar.

Perhaps I should have used HN as the example - it's also nothing but space/pageup and links.

As "AdblockingAndMorality" notes, ads are also potentially dangerous content. Let's say that you're a small business, and CryptoLocker nukes everything, including your backups. Would the content provider be liable? How about the ad distributor? Why shouldn't they, if you've been given no opportunity to opt out?

> I'm not a party to the contract between the advertiser and the content provider. > ... an agreement between two other parties

It's irrelevant what the behind-the-scenes relations are. The party you are engaging is providing the webpage with all it's content; that some of it is outsourced doesn't matter. Using your rationale, you should also be blocking any work done by freelance journalists.

If a company outsources it's billing, does this now mean that you can ethically access their services for free? After all, if a different company is the one posting you the bill, "I didn't agree to anything with them", so you don't need to pay up. It doesn't work that way. If you've ever been chased by a debt collection agency, you'll know that argument is no defence.

Perhaps walk into a diner and have a big meal. Then refuse to pay because you don't have an existing contract with any of the point-of-sale EFT providers or the manufacturer of the cash register. Those are contracts that the diner has with other parties and you have not consented to a contract with them, so you are within your rights to ignore them.

> I somehow also chose to see a specific dude taking a specific dump.

If you know a street is extremely likely to have a dude take a dump, then yes, choosing to walk down that street is accepting that you're also going to see a dude taking a dump.

Regarding your edit, I really don't care. I just think that talking about blocking ads as some sort of morally pure action is nonsense. It's not. You're consuming the content without the full bundle that the content provider put together - if you want to see the article, you're expected to see the ads along with it. I'm not saying that you shouldn't block ads, I'm just saying that if you do, don't pretend like it's actually an ethical action. If you want to be ethical, then don't use the site at all.

Using your rationale, you should also be blocking any work done by freelance journalists.

No, using that rationale, I should be blocking any work done by anyone I choose to block.

EDIT: As far as the "ethics" of ad-blocking, I'm not the one arguing ad-blocking is an ethical position. For me, it's an aesthetic position (ads are ugly), and — as The Fine Article does point out — one of choosing to have my browsing habits remain untouched, unmolested, and unanalyzed and re-sold by the demonstrably unclean hands the advertisers are grabbing at me with.

I guess you can call that an ethical position if you want, but it's not about what's right or wrong in my behavior, so my ethics are pretty much moot.

No, using that rationale, I should be blocking any work done by anyone I choose to block

You were complaining above that you were presented with content from a third party that you hadn't consented to, and didn't have a contract with.

I'm not the one arguing ad-blocking is an ethical position.

If you're not arguing about the ethics of it, why have you been talking about consent and the structure of contracts between parties? Nothing in your first, largest comment has anything to do with aesthetics, it's all about consent. Why, in the same paragraph as this statement, do you demean advertisers quite heavily about issues other than appearance? (deservedly or otherwise)

I'm still interested to hear your opinion on walking out on a bill because you don't have your own contract with the third-party EFT vendors.

I didn't say there weren't ethical arguments to be made around ad blocking. In fact, I offered what I thought was a pretty clear position on what I found to be the most compelling issue in that vein. I didn't lead with that argument in my original reply to you because it wasn't on point; I was replying to your specific language about contracts with an argument about my duty to honor a contract I wasn't a party to.

As for your question about skipping out on my restaurant tab because I don't have a contract with that restaurant's EFT vendor, I have two thoughts:

1. It's disanalogous, and so irrelevant. If some restaurants give away their food, some restaurants charge a monthly fee and let you eat as much as you want, and some charge per plate, and I don't know which is which before entering — before ordering, even — your question might be cogent.

As it stands, however, it's pretty much universal that if you walk into a restaurant, you'll be paying for your meal. So, I guess, to move that analogy to websites, if every website always had ads, and I was making an argument about blocking them on the basis that "I didn't know I'd be seeing an ad", I'd be full of shit.

But that's clearly not the world we live in, is it? So, moot.

2. Pursuant to my point above, that we live in a world where one always (or so close to always as to be practically indistinguishable) pays for one's meals at a restaurant: if Joe's Diner only accepts payment via Whiz-Bang EFT, Inc. and I don't have the means to transact with Whiz-Bang EFT, Inc. (say, I only have cash, or I don't have their app installed on my employer-provided phone — which is the only phone I'm carrying — and don't have rights to install new apps on that phone [1], or whatever), then it's not my fault if I can't pay Joe's Diner for my meal, is it?

My contract isn't with Whiz-Bang, else I'd already have a means of transacting with them, but I do have an (implicit) contract with Joe's to pay them for the food I ask them to serve me — again, we're talking about a world where one pays for one's meals, on a per-meal basis. If Joe's imposes an insurmountable obstacle to my fulfilling my contractual obligation, they're the ones who've voided that contract, not me.

Again, however, this is disanalogous to ads and websites, so I don't think it's terribly relevant. I'm just answering the question you specifically re-asked.

[1] Yes, that's unlikely to the point of absurdity, but so is this entire argument.

EDIT: formatting, phrasing, and clarification.

Sorry, was pulled away yesterday.

In short, I find it really odd that you take a "that's the way the world is" with the diner, but not with website advertising. You talk of consent and contracts as if website advertising is some kind of weird outlier that you hardly ever come across.

Just as you don't have a contract with the EFT vendor, neither do you have a contract with the web ad vendor. But the product is a whole - you're supposed to get one without the other. Blocking web ads is like skipping out on paying the bill at a diner. The individual damage is much less, and trivial, but ethically it's the same thing.

I do it. It's a selfish thing - I value my convenience more than I value the trivial fraction of a cent it costs the content provider. My problem is with people who will torture philosophy to try and make it sound like they're fighting a morally pure fight by blocking ads. It's not ethical, but it's not a great sin either. Just admit it's a selfish action and stop torturing the philosophy around consent and contracts. This kind of debate tactic is like the libertarian who redefines 'violence' to include receiving a letter from the tax department.

If you want to be ethical and you feel violated by ads, simply don't patronise the site. I don't care about blocking ads, but I do care that people describe it as some sort of morally clean action rather than a selfish convenience.

If the company ships your order then I'd say the ethical onus is quite low on your part. This is a company that has made not one, but two errors that seem to reinforce each other. How could a reasonable person tell if the company intended to give away their products or not?

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