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Comment by techsupporter | Hacker News Reader

> They also use AdBlock to basically steal content without letting publishers recoup the production costs and other investments.

I feel like we've had the adblock vs. no adblock debate so many times that no one will change her position. So, I won't. Until I am 99% certain that the ad delivery networks used by content providers will not do any of the following, I will use a blanket adblock:

- Autoplay video with sound or, really, any sound at all

- Move on the page (movement within the ad is fine with me)

- Pop up over the page like those absolutely horrendous "survey" or "give us your e-mail" modals do

- Carry malicious or infecting payloads

It also drives me nuts that I pay the New York Times for access and I still get ads on the mobile client.

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The only "ethical" complaint on that list is the last one. The others are no different than saying "I'm going to shoplift from this store because they play music over the loudspeaker way too loud" instead of, you know, deciding not to shop there.

And I've been an adblock user, but I'll admit that I've stolen content from sites by using adblock.

The "seller" gets to decide the "price", the "buyer" can agree to the "seller's" terms, attempt to negotiate, or decide not to partake in the transaction. The internet at times allows that script to flip.

I'm still not sure where the ethical boundaries lie, even as I've typed this response I can't decide what is right and what is wrong, or to what degree.

There is nothing at all unethical about preventing the most intrusive and annoying advertising practices. Allowing advertisers to auto-play music is a terrible idea for publishers, because it damages our relationship, but we have to cope with an imperfect world. And ultimately a browser is my reading platform on my computer in my home. I have no obligation to auto-play some hideous advertising jangle on it because I wrongly trusted some link and opened it under the current tab on Firefox. This is no more theft than is using a subway fold to skip the ads in the NYT print edition. Readers always skip the ads, it's just more evident in digital.

Though to be fair, over the years I've mostly avoided the most intrusive ads by failing to install Flash.

Readers have a direct relationship with publishers. Advertisers have a direct relationship with publishers. But readers do not have the direct relationship with publishers, and indirect access to readers is what the advertisers is paying the publishers for.

What creates an obligation to display a page in a certain way?

It seems to me that the idea that sites are taking advantage of users tendency to use default settings has about equal footing with the idea that users are taking advantage of sites when they don't use default settings.

There's no need for a paywall to work around that ambiguity, just return different content to registered users (and explain up front that the page is provided in exchange for the user viewing the ads).

>What creates an obligation to display a page in a certain way?

I'm not sure there is one, which is one way the internet flips the script. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that using adblock is unethical or stealing. Seems much closer to something like a donation box, where the "seller" puts the goods out there and hopes that the "buyers" will give money (in the form of clicking on ads or at least not using adblock).

It's a loose set of rules, the internet, but no one is really obligated to play buy those rules. The question arises, what does the internet look like if everyone uses adblock? What sites disappear that we care about and what disappears without a complaint? And what works in ways we wouldn't have imagined before?

That's not every ad platform. There are lots of crappy and shady networks that do this and also publishers who are willing to work with them, usually the smaller sites that want to put 50 ads on a page from the worst networks.

This unfortunately makes the whole industry look bad and the top companies are trying their best to fight back against all these crappy formats and fraud.

At the end though, the implicit deal is that you are reading content produced by the publisher, and it's accessible for free because you're exposed to ads. If you don't like the ads, please don't read the content. That's all there is to it. You're free to vote with your traffic and show publishers that their ad setup won't be tolerated, but adblock plugins are an easy way out that helps no one in the long term.

EDIT: I can tell by the downvotes that people find this a touchy topic and would rather just install adblock then consider the realities.

How am I supposed to know, before I click on a link, if the ads supporting the site I'm about to visit are "bad" or not?

A possible solution would be to develop an adblock product which whitelisted "good" ad networks by default (I think adblock plus has this feature for google ads at least). Getting that list populated and maintaining it would be tricky but feasible.

Adblockers aren't undetectable. Publishers know how many visitors are adblocking. Or, at least that information is attainable if they decide they want it.

There's also the issue of the simple time investment in curating ads. If I just somehow knew every website that depended on awful ads for the majority of their revenue, I'd happily avoid most of them, and everyone would be satisfied.

But the volume is so tremendous, an adblocker for me is surrender. I would like to support good ads and avoid/punish bad ads. But there are just so many websites, so many ads, I cannot mentally catalog it all and remember "oh right I'm ideologically avoiding site <blerp>" as I skim Google. Given that, uBlock is the only thing keeping my old laptop from collapsing under the weight of the bad ads that appear from every direction.

Actually it's a lot like spam blocking in some ways. Spam is such a voluminous problem, you are forced to implement blanket policies, leverage advanced technologies in heuristics, and maintain large networks of whitelists and blacklists, just to get on with life... that's what good ads and ad-free sites seem like, ham lost in a sea of spam.

Yes, I completely understand that. I think the best compromise if you're using AdBlock is to at least disable it on the higher-end sites you enjoy the most.

Also, because Adblock plugins can just stop network requests from ever happening, it's actually hard to accurately measure everything. Lots of publishers also arent that technical or have large dev teams so it might seem simple to the Hacker News readers but reality is more difficult for these sites operators. Wordpress actually runs more of the big famous sites then you may be aware of, just because it's easy and doesn't take a big ops team.

I do try to disable adblock on sites I like.

Which brings up a technical challenge- there's a vendor I like who implements targeted ads that follow you around the web. The ads are extremely benign and I would want to permit them- but they are hosted on a platform. How do I permit only certain vendors on an ad platform, without allowing the entire platform...

Unfortunately no. Certain networks do have a opt-out selection but this would not work because:

1) the opt-out choice relies on the same tracking cookies and stuff which would be blocked by adblockers

2) not every company offers opt-out because its a gray area of regulation, especially across global regions

3) you would have to opt-out of the infinite choices you dont want, just to let in the single one you do

>If you don't like the ads, please don't read the content.

I think one part of the issue is that the intent isn't so clear. You'll always have people who want the content regardless, but they're a lost cause from the onset.

Rather, for the rest, those sites/publishers would be well suited to making their intentions clear; i.e. "If you aren't going to view [click?] our ads, we don't want you reading our site."

There are many sites that outright block adblock users. For all the rest, it seems odd that, if they had that implicit contract in mind, they aren't blocking adblock users. Or issuing such a statement of readership intent.

It's hard to do. Adblock plugins work at the network layer and block requests completely based on matching the urls. This makes to engineer around, especially because lots of sites don't have lots of developer talent or resources.

Example: PageFair was a company that measured adblock usage and also showed messages like this, until their javascript tag got on the adblock list and suddenly their entire platform because useless.

Publishers need to take responsibility for their content. You want me to view an ad? Fine,serve it to me. Don't tell me to go download an ad from someone else.

An interesting idea, and one I'll note seems to work.

I think the bigger issue is the trusting someone to do data-collection for ads. When everything is "pay per click" or "pay per eyeball" both sides have incentive to engage in click-fraud. All these awful networks seem to be solving that issue by creating a third party who has to attract both advertisers, and affiliates, and thus shares(at least partially) the motives of both parties

Requiring your users to click on ads is a form of click fraud, and is banned in the TOS of many advertising networks. This is to help keep the site from "stealing" money from advertisers who are not particularly interesting in getting clicks from people who are only clicking on the ad to see the article, and have absolutely no intention of buying their products.

When _Google_-owned ad networks are in the "malware" bucket, it isn't the consumer's fault anymore for failing to distinguish.

I appreciate the concession that there is no explicit deal that readers will look at ads to pay for media. But there isn't actually such an implicit deal, either. There is an explicit deal between publishers and advertisers, in which money is traded for eyeballs. But to readers, publishers are simply offering free-to-read media in the hopes that they can monetize it sufficiently from views. Publishers can easily set up a paywall or payment system; this works very well in higher-value book-length writing. There there is an explicit deal in which publishers only make media available to readers who have purchased the right to read it. Likewise, plenty of people offer writing up for free, on HN, blogs, &c., without any plan to monetize it.

I can tell that you think I should expose myself the security risk of allowing ads, and everything else that comes in similar packages. The ads are annoying yes, but I probably wouldn't block them if it were simply a matter of tolerating small periodic annoyances.

Don't forget about tracking!

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