Controversial opinion: if you don't like websites with ads, don't use websites with ads. Otherwise you're breaking the agreement that the people hosting what you want to use have to make a living. If you consider ads to be psychological assault or other characterizations like this that I've heard before in this forum, stop going to those websites. You think the people that created what you want to use are bad people, infringing on your rights, why would you still use their stuff?
More hypocritical than that is that I know many such people who then go to create their apps and as soon as they have enough traffic, they'll add adsense to their apps but keep blocking it in others. There's also the argument that you block ads due to privacy, again here I'd say, don't use those websites. If you know there's a security camera at the bank branch and you don't want to be recorded, you don't go to the bank branch, no normal person would think to put a hood on their head to still go.
I bet this is going to get downvoted to shit, because I've been in HN for a few years and it's predictable where the crowd goes, but it seems very odd to me how we so easily deny other developers of creating free to use tools just because we think we have some moral higher ground.
No. The agreement is that my browser will issue HTTP requests, their web server will return some HTML. There's a legal requirement that neither payload is intended to cause harm, but the agreement - unless I've signed a contract - does not go further than that.
If someone wants to feed ads into that content, that's their right. If I want to change the way that content displays, that's my right.
by opening the website, that data HAS left the origin server and is sent to my browser. What i do with that data is up to me.
i choose to ignore half of it so be it. Is there a mandate that i have to "hold it the right way only" like apple famously did with their antennagate?
This is the best argument. If they send me an exploit it isn’t expected for me to run it blindly because of some unwritten contract, right? Once the payload is sent to me it is my right to execute it as I wish. That is the unwritten contract.
> the agreement - unless I've signed a contract - does not go further than that
I don't think they were saying there was a legal agreement, just a moral and social one.
It's like taking all the eggs from an honesty box outside someone's house - you didn't sign anything saying you wouldn't, but it's pretty clear you're in the wrong.
It’s interesting that moral and social burden is somehow put onto people that don’t want to be tracked/shadow profiled/spied on, and NOT on the companies that do tracking/spying.
I don't know what code their sites will send my browser until they send it. But I do know that my browser tells them not to track me in its initial request, so they are free to send me away and not let me "in the door".
But they don't, they let me in despite me being very clear that I am entering on the condition that they don't track me, so here we are. They don't get to pull the surprised-face card when I then proceed to not let them track me.
Adjacent to that, I think a "I'm not going to display your ads" or bluntly "don't show me ads" header would make perfect sense and yet I'm quite sure that webmasters would treat it the exact same way that they've treated do-not-track.
I am sorry, was it you that wrote "I don't think they were saying there was a legal agreement, just a moral and social one. It's like taking all the eggs from an honesty box outside someone's house - you didn't sign anything saying you wouldn't, but it's pretty clear you're in the wrong."? If that’s not putting moral and social burden onto tracking blockers, I don’t know what is.
Well I think it is - they're offering something with an understanding.
Yes the understanding isn't legally enforced, but socially that's what they're expecting.
Since you know that's what they're expecting (unless you're an idiot), the more moral thing to do is to respect that and not engage with them if you don't agree, rather than continuing to take while knowing that it's not what they wanted.
No, nice try I guess but this is wrong in several ways.
Morals are not defined by capitulating to the wishes of others. If it was, the moral thing for advertisers to do would be to not try to show people ads who don’t wish to view them but do wish to consume content. Your argument here falls apart the second you consider any symmetry.
Furthermore, there are decades of history of advertisers being perfectly aware that most people would prefer not to see the ads, given a choice. They do not, in fact, expect people to just watch the ads. As evidence of this fact, they have come up with dozens and dozens of legal and technical mechanisms to force people to view their ads despite their preferences.
Morals are not defined by respecting the wishes of other people either. You’re right to pivot to common expectations, that’s closer, but when you examine the actual expectations of both the public and the advertisers, you find that it roundly undermines your choice of framing here.
Restaurants are a false analogy. There is an explicit agreement known in advance by both parties, a legal contract with a restaurant when you order, and leaving without paying is a crime. There is no such expectation with ads.
This is cringey and goofy. It’s not a moral issue, you’re really stretching. Even if it was a moral issue, the global known public expectation of ads is that they’re sometimes tolerated and on the whole not preferred. You’re choosing to prioritize the viewpoint of advertisers over respecting the wishes of the public, while if you look at it from the public’s perspective, ads have never been the “moral” choice.
Your argument, of course, is also wearing blinders to the many ways that ads can be actually immoral, for example as a soft bait-and-switch, by offering one thing to entice while delivering something else with an agenda, and the ways ads are often directly immoral by using misleading or untrue information, selling goods and services that are overall harmful to the public, from excessive sugar to payday loans to expensive pharmaceuticals to politics.
> Morals are not defined by respecting the wishes of other people either.
I think they are - it's moral to respect other people's reasonable wishes, or not interact with them if you're not able to respect them.
If I know someone expects that I'll bring a bottle of wine to their party, I should either do that, or I should decline to come to the party. If I know that's what they were expecting and I turn up empty handed and eat all their party food then I'm just a bad person even if no laws were broken.
'Nah nah nah no laws broken, agreement was never written down, no money changed hands' isn't a kind way to interact with people.
You’re moving the goal posts now. The actual expectation of the public today is that blocking ads is okay, just like muting the TV or fast-forwarding a video is okay. The actual expectation of the advertisers is also that people don’t want to watch ads, if they have a choice. They have acknowledged this directly in many ways. So the common expectation is that people prefer to not watch ads, therefore by your logic the only moral choice is to not try to show ads to people.
> therefore by your logic the only moral choice is to not try to show ads to people
No I wouldn't agree with that. I think it's moral to show adverts, but not to be subversive about it, and I think it's moral to offer a way to turn them off such as paid plans, which I often use.
This isn’t about what you think, your opinion does not define what’s moral. Morality is defined by what the public as a whole agrees with. Today, the public is okay with blocking ads. The public is also okay with showing ads and paid plans too. Therefore, again, this is not a moral issue. But if it was, both the common (public and advertisers) and public expectations alone demonstrate that the less moral choice is to try to show ads to people against their will when they’re consuming content unrelated to the ads. The advertisers have always known this and they are free to not pay for ads and not support the content, but they choose to because ads still work well enough, for better or worse, despite ad-blocking behaviors among people who care enough.
> This isn’t about what you think, your opinion does not define what’s moral.
Err that's exactly what my comment was about. I was sharing my opinion on what I think is moral. If you don't want to hear my opinion on it why are you reading the thread?
I'm not threatening to codify this into law and enforce it on others if that's what you were worried about lol!
The restaurant analogy works. Blocking web ads is not like ignoring a billboard, or turning away from TV ads. When you go to an ad-supported web site, your individual request actually costs money to serve. You are incrementally increasing their costs while denying them the corresponding income. You are making a decision to continue increasing those costs for your own benefit.
There's a reasonable argument to be made that the first request is a gimme. As soon as you see that there are ads being blocked, however, the moral thing to do would be to close the browser and go elsewhere.
Billboards and TV ads cost money too, generally speaking far more money per ad than web ads. The idea that they’re somehow different from website ads is wrong.
> As soon as you see that there are ads being blocked, however, the moral thing to do would be to close the browser and go elsewhere.
False, because that’s not the actual public expectation today. The common expectation that would define what is moral in this situation is that blocking is reasonable because ads are intrusive and annoying and often get in the way of the reason I’m on the site. I’d be fine with saying it’s “nice” and it’s “supporting” the site to not block the ad, but hard disagree that blocking is immoral, that’s just hyperbole.
That’s not really the advertiser’s wish either, they don’t want the result to be less traffic, they just want you to watch the ad. So your suggestion isn’t actually respecting their wishes.
> Since you know that's what they're expecting (unless you're an idiot), the more moral thing to do is to respect that and not engage with them if you don't agree
If you think the current state of online advertising as a business model is actively immoral, as I do, then I'd argue violating that expectation is at least morally neutral if not actually the moral thing to do.
If the goal is to end online advertising as a business model, then not visiting the site is either morally equivalent (no change) or morally worse (does not harm the business) to visiting it with an ad blocker (does harm the business).
No that doesn't make any sense - the whole point of a sample is to give to people who don't already have an intent to purchase. That's what the company wants to do and their offer to you.
I don't think these replies are the clever 'gotchas' that you think they are.
Certainly this doesn't hold up without an explanation and you shouldn't expect the reader to provide that for themselves.
If that sounds wrong to you, I'd invite you to put your thoughts into words.
Samples are funded by the expectation that some will follow through with a purchase and justify the free distribution of those samples.
Websites with ads are funded by the expectation that some will click through, make a purchase, and justify the free distribution of those bits.
If you eat samples with no intent of making a purchase, you are subverting FoodCo's expectation that samples will lead to sales. You are making their business model unsustainable.
Why do you think the free taking of bits (which cost much less to serve, and is much less tangible) is less justified than the free taking of food samples? In both cases it subverts the business model expectations of the party offering the free stuff.
I think individuals are not obligated to support the business models of companies that give them free stuff in hopes it will make them money - so have no moral concerns with either case.
Their understanding is entirely in their own mind. I, and a very large percentage of internet users, reject it. Content publishers might want this social contract to exist, but it does not.
I personally don't find ad-supported content objectionable. But it's still my browser running on my computer and I'll do what I like with it.
How far do you take this point? Because the social expectation is not just that you allow the ads to be served, but that you read/watch them and that they increase the likelihood of you buying the products/services being advertised. Is it immoral for me to ignore the ads that I allow them to display on my computer? And if not, what is the difference apart from the effort I'm putting in?
I think the normal expectation would be that the advertiser pays for the ads being shown together with the content you're really interested in, and it's the advertisers' problem if the ads produce any value for them.
This feels like an arbitrary line to me. The host expects the ads to be rendered, and that's my problem. The advertiser expects their ads to be viewed, but that's their problem. What's the distinction?
Is it that I'm only in an implicit social contract with the person serving the content I want? Then it would be morally fine for me to block ads as long as I trick advertisers into thinking I didn't- the host only cares about whether they get paid. And what about on YouTube or Instagram, where the advertiser is the host? Google expects me to view their ads, not just render them, and I'm definitely in a social contract with them.
Or is it that they are allowed to stake a moral claim on the content of my browser, but not on my attention? Then I'd be allowed to block full-screen ads that force me to find an X, or autoplaying ads with sound, as they are forcing me to give them something they have no right to. And if I had an attention deficit disorder or a shopping addiction, all ads would be in that category. Even without such things, every ad accesses my attention without my consent, even if it's just the attention required to ignore them.
I disagree. There are forms of adverts that my browser extensions will not block - simple images for example. It’s not my fault that sites choose not to use these any more, and instead use a model that is, in my view, an unacceptable security risk.
It's morally acceptable to block intrusive ads, in order to force advertisers to adopt better practices. Isn't that the way of the free market? To vote with your wallet, I mean, with your eyeballs?
The ultimate purpose of ads is getting money from us, why can't we have a say about how the request is presented to us? Ads are not a privilege or a right, they're beggars posted at every corner of the Internet.
> It's morally acceptable to block intrusive ads, in order to force advertisers to adopt better practices. Isn't that the way of the free market? To vote with your wallet, I mean, with your eyeballs?
By not consuming intrusive ads, and by not buying products promoted with unethical practices.
You can't possibly defend the current state of private spying and surveillance, it's dystopian. The data collected is sold (directly or indirectly) to bad actors, and is ripe for abuse. You can't just say "deal with it or GTFO", ad blocking is the only recourse we as consumers have to voice our opinion.
I don’t view it as my role as a consumer to prejudge the business model of the websites I visit. If a website does not want my view, they can block me or use a paywall. That’s fine.
But a website could cover the marginal cost of serving me content with simple image adverts, sponsored content, donation mechanism, subscription or otherwise. They may decide that having X% of viewers block ads is a ‘cost of business’ and is worth it to increase viewership.
Modelling the situation as ‘honest’ to accept ads and ‘dishonest’ to block them may undermine the chosen business model of the site, and not visiting again models the monetisation strategy as static, which it is not.
Not the person you're replying to, but my take is that the website is giving away information for free on an open protocol without requiring a login and I'm just choosing which parts of it I want to download. I see no moral implications to that other than an implied "thank you for providing that information or service".
The parts I choose not to download are designed to psychologically manipulate me into buying something I likely don't want, they run code on my system I don't care for them to run, and they grab what data they can in order to profile me. I don't feel like I'm the one that should be feeling shame here.
If the advertising companies showed any kind of restraint and respect, maybe I'd feel differently. From what I've seen, it's been getting progressively worse since the "punch the monkey" days of the web.
If the person or entity hosting the content can't support the creation and hosting of their website without trying to manipulate me and track me and without opening my system up to potential malware, then good riddance, I guess. If all they did was show ads as text or static images without any of the tracking nonsense (basically the old print magazine or newspaper model), then I wouldn't care that much. But they don't, so I do.
And if we really want to speak about morals there is an unacknowledged moral issue here in that most websites using ads are hooked up to someone else's ad network and do not vet them for accuracy or safety. The website owner has seemingly no responsibility for the portal they opened to shove someone else's content into my face.
Until such time I can demand payment for damages when that negligently opened portal serves the latest zero day or scams my family or employees and tracks me all over the web while violating my privacy, I am forced to conclude the average webmaster wants the benefit without the responsibility. And with that, the blocker stays on, with a clear conscience and an eye to safety. Your business model that demands I sacrifice safety and privacy so you can make a few pennies is not my fucking problem.
First party ads are an entire different issue and do not have any of these concerns. They are also very rare.
Even if all ads were well-behaved and didn't carry more risk of infection than licking BART seats, I'd still block them. The entire industry is evil, in that their whole reason to exist is manipulating people into acting against their own interests.
By reading this comment, you have tacitly agreed to pay me 30 cents. If you do not do so then you are stymying my income. You now have a moral imperative to financially support the creation of this comment and more like it. If you do not want to give me 30 cents then you should never have read this comment.
About as much of a moral quandary as changing TV channels temporarily when an ad comes on. Or more directly, using a TiVo approach to skip ads altogether. Or changing the radio station during a block of ads. Or skipping past an ad segment in a podcast. Or... not looking up at a billboard when I'm driving on a freeway that raises money from billboards.
Or more aptly, switching and/or muting the tab when an ad comes on a Twitch stream.
The vast majority of modern day ads are a cancer on society that are engineered to maximize the insecurities and desires of the viewer. They try to make you feel as unhappy as possible so you'll make a purchase to soothe those negative feelings.
If there was a moral ad network, I might take pause, but the industry has leaned into the rottenness and embraced creepy surveillance and thought manipulation.
I don't think advertising is moral. I don't feel even the slightest ounce of responsibility to consume advertisements. Do you really feel this way or just trying to have a debate?
> you really see no moral quandary in stymying their income?
Nope. Find another business model or go bankrupt. If you send me ads, I'll delete them. No exceptions. I don't have to justify myself either, "I don't want to see ads" is more than a good enough reason.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
If a person is standing in public space and talking, while at the same time having a bunch of advertisement signs around him, and you had the technology (say, AR glasses) to block out said advertisements from your view, would you consider it immoral to block out the advertisements, while listening to what the person is saying?
I have normal sunglasses that you clip on your normal glasses. When I wear them, all those vertical LCD adverticement screens are black to me. Adblocking glasses are very nice!
Tip to ad companies, don't turn the displays 90 degrees, they are meant to be used in landscape mode for a reason...
You don't know what websites have ads until you visit them.
But the problem isn't the presence of ads. It's that the ads are served by advertising networks, that track users across multiple websites and build profiles of users.
And that the original websites have very little control over the content of the ads, which may be irrelevant or contain malware.
The ads are often animated images, sometimes with sound, which are distracting.
The ads are often deceptive ("Your computer is infected. Install this program now!") or clickbait.
Some sites don't distinguish the ads from the content, which makes it confusing.
If you want a blast from the past, disable the popup blocker on your web browser and see how many sites still fill your screen with intrusive popups and notifications.
Also, people have used video recordings of live television to skip commercials. Some devices even have a commercial skip function. Or people just mute the television while commercials are playing. If this is acceptable, then why not block ads on websites?
This. I'd be perfectly happy with ads that are actually related to the content and served by the same IP as the content. Going advertising networks is lazy and inconsiderate.
Do you close your eyes walking around town any time you go by a store front, you see a roadside ad, a bench covered in ads, a taxi backseat, public toilets, any sports events and jerseys, TV, newspapers, magazines, radio... Are you morally obligated to get rid of those too? If you truly believe this, how do you function in society?
Why is digital attention morally a big problem but attention in real life not? I get it, the world would be prettier without ads, but you'd also be able to afford way less things. Maybe you want to live that life, but most of society over time has gravitated to this mode of selling goods and services.
> Do you close your eyes walking around town any time you go by a store front, you see a roadside ad, a bench covered in ads, a taxi backseat, public toilets, any sports events and jerseys, TV, newspapers, magazines, radio...
Honestly, yes, I often do. I intentionally do not look at billboards when driving, I skip ad pages in my woodworking magazines, and I listen to local public radio without ads. In the rare times I watch live TV (wife watching football) I mute the TV during ads. Obviously it's impossible in every situation ever, but yes, I genuinely do try to avoid ads off the Internet, too. I find most of them really bothersome and offensive.
Congratulations. You are now in violation of the highway code of ethics as billboard revenue is how they pay for creating those highways. By not looking at them, you are lowering their roi, costing them more money and this is akin to stealing
> Do you close your eyes walking around town any time you go by a store front, you see a roadside ad
Actually, yes.
Specifically the video screens that some gas pumps have. If it start's spamming me while I'm pumping gas, I literally cover my ears and walk about 10 feet away until I can't hear the ad anymore (you are not supposed to walk way when pumping gas, it's unsafe!).
I'll then mentally take note that this is a gas station to avoid and never shop there again.
One interesting thing I have noticed, ads that existed when I was a kid (billboards, magazine ads, commercials on an actual TV) don't bother me the way new tech ads do: on websites, gas pumps, and especially YouTube ads. If i'm watching Youtube on a laptop I will always mute the volume and focus on just the bottom right corner, waiting for "skip ad" to appear. I absolutely F*cking hate YouTube ads on a computer. If I'm watching YouTube on a large TV via Roku, they don't bother me nearly as much and sometimes I even watch them.
Maybe it's just things that used to be ad-free and now aren't....
Those often have a Mute button!! It's always unlabeled, but the upper-right (or second-down-from-upper-right) button is usually Mute. If not those, then one of the others probably is. If you have a sharpie on you, label it for the next poor soul that has to use that pump.
I'm in the same camp regarding gas pump ads. I actively avoid gas stations that have them. In particular, I have sensory issues and the volume is always much too loud. I wonder why I can't pump fucking gas in peace without some speaker blaring in my face.
Another way to avoid the ads yelling at you while you are trying to pump gas is to tap on the "Weather" or "Traffic" tabs on many gas pump interfaces.
I don't know how common it is elsewhere, but the stations I use that have at-the-pump advertising all have those features (and doing so on those pumps silences the audio at the pump).
[edited to mention the audio being silenced when the weather or traffic tab is selected]
> Do you close your eyes walking around town any time you go by
Actually yeah, sort of. I avoid looking at the advertising in my town as much as humanly possible.
> Are you morally obligated to get rid of those too?
Absolutely. I'm trying to organize support in my neighborhood in order to get them removed by law or something. Nobody should be subjected to this crap. There's even precedent for this:
The main difference here is that on the web, you can get rid of the ads *for yourself and yourself only*, without affecting anyone else. You are merely processing the incoming stream of data in a different way.
In the real world, there is no such option - if you, I don't know, vandalize a billboard, you are affecting everybody else, not to mention damaging someone else's property.
Not too long ago the streetcars and buses in Amsterdam were plastered with huge ads for online gambling services, often aimed at young people. Think about it: the public transport, which might just be a public service paid for by tax money and ticket fare, is literally subsidized by youths with a gambling addiction. This is an extreme example perhaps, but it illustrates (besides a complete disregard for citizens' wellbeing) how ads are just a way of indirectly taking money from people.
It's often framed as if putting up ads is just a way of getting free money out of thin air, as you do when you say "without ads [...] you'd also be able to afford way less things". But that money is always coming from somewhere.
> Do you close your eyes walking around town any time you go by a store front, you see a roadside ad, a bench covered in ads, a taxi backseat, public toilets, any sports events and jerseys, TV, newspapers, magazines, radio... Are you morally obligated to get rid of those too? If you truly believe this, how do you function in society?
I truly believe it, I hope we'll one day be able to outlaw at least billboards and the like not related to any business storefront. But I try not to let it get to me too much, because as you rightly say, you can't really live that way..
> Why is digital attention morally a big problem but attention in real life not? I get it, the world would be prettier without ads, but you'd also be able to afford way less things.
Speak for yourself. Or at least don't presume to speak for me.
It is more accurate to say that without ads people would want way less things.
You think humans were just sitting around since the inception of the species thinking "Gosh, I wish I had a Swiffer™ sweeper to make cleaning more convenient"? No, some marketing asshole came up with the idea to convince people they needed a disposable mop so they could sell more mops. Multiply that by some trillions and you get the marketing industry.
> You think humans were just sitting around since the inception of the species thinking "Gosh, I wish I had a Swiffer™ sweeper to make cleaning more convenient"? No, some marketing asshole came up with the idea to convince people they needed a disposable mop so they could sell more mops.
Do you work for a living? How does the company you own or work for sell its products or services? How does it find customers to pay your salary?
I own my company. We seek out people who need our services by talking to them, networking with them in places they choose to network, carefully reviewing then winning RFPs, and so on.
Word of mouth is actually the results of effective branding. Advertising is typically spam and a waste of resources. Branding <> Advertising, though they can have overlap.
How does your company find people to sell its products to?
Most awareness is achieved through word of mouth not advertising. I assume we all know what aws and docker is but I have never seen an advert for that.
I have lived in a place where many of those examples of public ads were actually banned by the government. It was something I took for granted until I visited other places at which point I realized how good we had it.
The majority ads are garish, visual clutter that do not respect individuals, ruin our surroundings, and we’d be better off without them.
>Why is digital attention morally a big problem but attention in real life not?
Because we can fight against the former, whereas the latter is much more difficult. Despite this, we do consider both problems.
>most of society over time has gravitated to this mode of selling goods and services
More accurately it was the path of least resistance. Most individuals did not enjoy increasing number of commercials on TV and it shows in the alternatives.
This is a really bad analogy. If ads in the places you've mentioned physically slowed me down, interrupted what i was trying to do, and tracked my movements across the city, I absolutely would go to great lengths to avoid them. There would be major public outrage over it.
Case in point, magazines are more ads than content these days and I don't read them.
> Do you close your eyes walking around town any time you go by a store front
I think most people would just walk by without looking. You'r analogy would be that people walking past your store should be forced to look at your ads or not walk past your store.
> Do you close your eyes walking around town any time you go by a store front, you see a roadside ad, a bench covered in ads, a taxi backseat, public toilets, any sports events and jerseys, TV, newspapers, magazines, radio...
There will be open-source AR projects to block those, too, one day
> If you truly believe this, how do you function in society?
When was functioning in society the point of displaying advertisements? Advertisements are a form of speech. Speech I have every right pay attention to or disregard as I see fit.
You can bet your butt that if people could filter out billboards and intrusive advertising alone in the real world with just some kind of glasses, they absolutely would.
I would see that as a reasonable view (not the one I agree with, but a reasonable viewpoint) in the late 1990s where people wrote their own web pages and hosted them on different servers.
Now that we have a coordinated oligopoly on content distribution "if you do not like it do not use it" does not work anymore. Today, if someone wants to say something using the web they will see that content monetized via algorithmics and attention grabbing ads.
I feel no moral constraints on pushing back. My 2c.
Controversial opinion: I don't serve ads to my customers - I feel absolutely zero fucking sympathy for site owners when I block ads.
If you don't want me to block ads - pick a different model. Preferably one where I'm a customer, and you're catering to my needs instead of selling me off to the highest bidder.
Second controversial opinion: Ads should be banned entirely, legislatively, because the industry is a breeding ground of misaligned incentives, data abuse, corruption, and generally scummy behavior. Will that remove a lot of free services? Sure - I don't care. I think the net will be a win.
Third controversial opinion - your "controversial opinion" leads to a dystopia where people are forced to view ads everywhere. They are manipulated non stop for the benefit of someone else. I don't just think you're wrong - I think you're malicious.
It's definitely a net win. If people won't pay for the content and services, then they don't deserve to exist. There's a ton of useless, low quality crap on the internet.
How do you propose I know whether a website displays ads before I visit it? I'm not going to maintain a blocklist of every ad-using website on every device I use. I'm just going to use an ad blocker. Their crappy business model isn't my problem.
Ads pay for hosting websites in the current model that got to the point of being the only option. Thank you, but I will do all I can to upset this particular apple cart.
> Why dont you build a better model then replace it?
I do not know if you are serious or sarcastic. Assuming serious, that was feasible 30 years ago. Now trying to build anything competitively different gets you bought out or deplatformed. Neither Brin nor Zuckerberg would stand a chance if they started today.
> A lot of jobs depend on ads, dont shit all over people
A lot of jobs depend on mass calling people at dinnertime with spam donation requests. That is not the reason not to challenge this business model.
One fb and google were startups, startups will one day beat them. It is the nature of the marketplace. There is so much room to play in areas they can not.
I dont hear you challenging a business model. I hear you calling to tear down a system that you do not understand with naive statements.
Ah so you are an extremist with no understanding of the real world, thank you, I will exit this conversation before you start telling me about the lizard people who really control our leaders living in the underground.
Most websites are completely trivial to host. e.g. from what I can find, Reddit only gets ~8k page views/second, and only has 13B posts/comments total? An old archive of the site had ~1.7B posts/comments at ~1TB uncompressed, meaning you could fit every text post today on a few SSDs and host the whole site for the price of a high end gaming computer (or a couple of them for redundancy) and an unmetered connection.
In our modern world of user generated content and incredible hardware, any nerd could host even the most popular sites as a relatively cheap hobby. The only thing making them non-trivial is... all of the infrastructure for the ads, spying, and control. That and image/video hosting, which could be done through something like ipfs if it were integrated into browsers.
Spoken like an engineer with no real understanding of what it takes to host Reddit let alone an understand of the business side of things. You have zero idea what you are talking about.
Like I said in my comment, the "business side of things" (i.e. the infrastructure to support ads, spying, control) are what makes it non-trivial. You can't use "making money is hard" as an argument against me saying that it's so cheap a hobbyist could do it for fun.
Hosting a forum that gets the traffic Reddit does at higher availability than Reddit does (Reddit returns error pages all the time) is absolutely trivial on modern hardware (except for images/videos, as I said). I've known several people that have unmetered connections/servers in datacenters as a hobby.
The entire history of every text post/comment ever on that site could fit on 2-3 SSDs now. The traffic is nothing. It doesn't take a lot to host a site that can fit on one computer with plenty of room to spare.
sigh, nothing wrong with ad blockers and I've got nothing against them.
But, if you want to support the websites you use you should think about what you are doing. What is frustrating here is the lack of respect for people who create a lot of the web you use, and then you don't pay them. Ads are a way to fund websites, not all of them, but a lot.
My attention is mine. It is part of me, a part of my mind, my consciousness. There is not a single person on this earth that is entitled to it. It is not a currency they can pay their bills with. It is not something that they have any assumed right to.
So it's funny to see you talk about respect. Advertising's inherent property is its complete lack of respect for me, my choices and my attention. They don't ask if I want to see this crap, they just show it to me. They insert their noise into my mind without my consent. I block them and they double down on it by finding ways to get past my blocker. And to you this mind rape is okay just because it funds your site?
Those websites are creating something for you, and you are complaining that they are trying to get paid for their work? Don't browse websites with ads then.
Attention is not something you actively control, its a very complex issue between your subconscious and conscious. That is a much bigger discussion.
> you are complaining that they are trying to get paid for their work
I got nothing against you or anyone else getting paid. I'm complaining about the general lack of respect. People act as if they own my attention and can sell it off to the highest bidder. Blockers are merely self defense against these hostile websites.
> Attention is not something you actively control
It's still mine and nobody has any business selling it off for money. If they try, I'll stop them.
I don't have any problems interacting with people on the street, especially when they ask for help. In my experience they are always polite and respectful too. Unlike advertisers.
I'm in favor for websites being paid what they ask for.
The problem with ads is that people don't want to pay with their attention and personal data.
Another problem with ads is that website owners can not directly set a price, and they cannot set the price above a certain threshold where ads simply don't work anymore. It doesn't scale.
They sell by manipulating people into buying. Seriously stop being naive. Coca Cola doesn't need to raise awareness of its product, it's in every fridge ever. The ads are not there to inform people that Coca Cola exists, they're there to manipulate people into buying Coca Cola.
Are you so easily convinced you believe whatever political opinion Fox News is selling?
The dictionary says that to manipulate is to 'control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly, unfairly, or unscrupulously.' If you want to tack on 'when they're not selling products" for your personal use, be my guest, but then 'advertising isn't manipulation' is tautologous. And you really should have brought up that you have a special, secret definition when you told someone point blank that advertising wasn't it.
And waste thousands of man hours for few measly pennies for the webmaster. They don't care about us or websites, they don't care if they wasted 30s from thousands of people in exchange from one more sale. Excessive advertising is a modern plague because it has become too cheap.
My estimation is likely exaggerated, I was thinking of YouTube and websites with sticky video ads.
Since 20,000 people seeing a 30s unskippable ad in Youtube amounts to 167 man hours used, maybe I should have said "hundreds of man hours wasted for a few measly dollars?".
Look, it's going to get worse as more people get fed up with aggressive advertising practices and learn about safe ad blocking. It's going to be disruptive, and it will put out of business many websites that aren't paying attention. Big ad companies know it and are actively looking for new ways to keep eyeballs and product placement everywhere.
Don't worry about the few people who use ad blockers, just be ready to follow new ad practices when they come.
In fact, If I find a website useful, and it doesn't push aggressive/tracking ads, I purposefully whitelist it. Complaining about people blocking ads on your website might not encourage them to whitelist it, though. Your best advocate is your own work.
This has to be satire, are you saying that seeing a billboard on the road makes a difference in your life that you'd go to another road? Have you been outside in any city whatsoever?
Read the GP again - they are saying that having an ad is the reason to change your behavior when in fact many websites are vital to modern commerce, social activity, and others. It's a dumb argument as you clearly see.
I don't see it at all. The way to pay for those things you need to function in society are the ads. You are making the decision for everyone else, including those less fortunate than you, that those services should start charging money just because your morality is against an ad supported free to use service.
Wait, what? The way to pay for things you need to function in society are taxes, and direct payments coming out of your wages (or equivalent thereof). Ads are something completely disconnected from "things you need to function in society".
Isn't this a bit equivalent to owning a TV (pre-internet days) that refuses to allow you to mute the sound during the advertising segments? How about taping such television shows for your own personal use, while cutting out the advertisements? What about loaning (or copying) such videotapes so others can watch them? See for example, these historical discussions from the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s:
> (1984) "Several Hollywood studios sued Sony, a manufacturer of VCRs, seeking money damages and an injunction against sales. The studios charged that Sony was responsible for copyright infringements. A lower court held that there was no infringement in recording material broadcast over public airwaves. An appeals court reversed, holding Sony liable for "contributory infringement." The Supreme Court has reversed that, saying that Sony is not liable because Congress has not spoken clearly about this practice."
There were even technologies introduced to automate the process, and IIRC, some were able to automatically skip over the advertisements when auto-taping the shows (1991):
I honestly don’t get it. I block ads because I don’t want to see them, because I find them annoying and distracting. I don’t need any other rationale.
They’re being shown on my computer, which I control, so of course I make changes to it that enhance the experience for me. If you don’t want me to have the ability to do that, it is unwise to send me the content in the first place. I haven’t agreed to look at ads; the website owners put the content in a public place.
> if you don't like websites with ads, don't use websites with ads.
I don't use websites with ads! I use just the websites, without the ads.
> Otherwise you're breaking the agreement that the people hosting what you want to use have to make a living.
They are breaking the agreement of not filling proper content with ad junk. You know, the agreement everybody in society is implicitly part of because I believe it's the right thing to do?
> You think the people that created what you want to use are bad people, infringing on your rights, why would you still use their stuff?
That's like saying if someone published a poem with an ad slogan on the last line, I'm not supposed to skip it, because why am I using their poem without the ads.
> how we so easily deny other developers of creating free to use tools just because we think we have some moral higher ground.
Developers should definitely create free tools (to modify and redistribute, as well as to use). But they should not spoil them with ads.
What exactly is the "agreement" here? Consider this parallel: Every time commercials come on the TV, I turn off the TV. Am I in breach of an agreement with the TV station to consume the ad? Why is that different than using an ad blocker?
I somewhat agree with you that it is hypocritical to refuse ads but still go to the website, especially if the website offer a paid option and that you have a Software Developer salary.
However, if you get downvoted, it might also be because complaining about being downvoted (even before actually receiving downvotes) is pretty annoying
Imagine being extorted by Google into paying to avoid ads, being advertised to anyway by sponsored segments hardcoded into videos and being tracked and profiled on top of it all.
Paying just makes your attention even more valuable. If you have enough disposable income to pay for this, they can only imagine what you'll pay for if they manage to get ads in front of your eyeballs.
> you're breaking the agreement that the people hosting what you want to use have to make a living
I entered no such agreement. I asked your server for some data and it gave it to me. What happens beyond that is up to me. I might be using lynx, for all you know, or have javascript or even image rendering off for reasons of resources or bandwidth. Are those classes of user also freeloaders?
But in the interest of transparency, how about I set a header, let's call it "WontRenderAds" and tell you ahead of time, then you can decide whether to even serve the page. That sound fair? I'd be perfectly happy to do it.
Even if I am blocking ads, I am still paying for the content. Every product that I buy has a fraction of the ad budget in its price, the ad budget gets spend on various web sites. At least to a first approximation it does not really matter whether I see ads or block them. One could do a more careful analysis, how seeing the ads would change my spending behavior, how blocking ads changes ad prices and what not. But I do not think that blocking ads means that I am not paying my share for the content I am consuming. [1]
[1] Admittedly it could be the case, the people using ad blockers could be a very special group of people that would also see very special ads and buy very special products. But even then, the ad budget in the products I buy has to go somewhere. Therefore I would assume that at worst there will be some distortion in the prices of ads, how ad budgets are allocated and so on when I am blocking ads but no complete freeloading on the backs of others.
> if you don't like websites with ads, don't use websites with ads
No need to abstain from anything, we have the technology to fix the websites instead. It's called uBlock Origin.
Here's the deal: websites are rendering and running on our computers, and we alone decide what code runs and what elements show up on screen. If you don't like it, then don't send out web pages for free to any user agent that requests one. All you have to do is return 402 Payment Required.
> you're breaking the agreement that the people hosting what you want to use have to make a living
I don't remember "agreeing" to anything.
> If you know there's a security camera at the bank branch and you don't want to be recorded, you don't go to the bank branch, no normal person would think to put a hood on their head to still go.
Yeah, just opt out of society. Every single bank everywhere has cameras so if you don't like to be tracked just don't go to banks at all.
> You think the people that created what you want to use are bad people, infringing on your rights, why would you still use their stuff?
For internet content, the people who create the content I want and the people adding the advertisements and profiting from them are rarely the same. For physical content, it's often a necessary evil due to ethical (non-advertising) products being unable to compete effectively with unethical ones.
Controversial opinion: If you can't make money from your website without shoving ads in my face, perhaps you should seek either:
* another monetisation scheme for your website, or
* a different line of business than a website.
The race-to-the-bottom that is ad-supported websites is nothing more than a massive failure of imagination; pure laziness; a grift of the first magnitude.
I think it's a good idea to act in the same way that you would like other people to act. I think making an income through advertising is both immoral and inefficient, and I would like to see ad-supported sites shut down. So I think that it is actually morally imperative that I send a message to such sites that their actions are causing harm, and I would encourage everyone else to do the same.
If I were hyporcritical enough to run an ad-supported site, I would hope that my site visitors would do the same thing to me.
HTTP is a request based protocol. I make a request and you can choose to accept or reject it. If the host breaks the social contract by polluting the connection with unsolicited content it's entirely within the users prerogative to block such requests.
So you are saying that I should respect some form of implied agreement with a industry that is rampantly engaging in the theft of my data? Isn't there some form of implied agreement that I get to name the price of my product?
Also, you are acting like all web browsing is by choice and ignoring the network effect that essentially forces people to use certain sites to participate in the society that they belong to.
We live in a world where THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Not withstanding the negative environmental, social and psychological effects that advertising can have .. I simply don't care to live in a world where I'm sold products and services 24/7.
"Then pay for the content!" .. fully subscribing to every publication I read isn't viable; financially or practically.
How is anyone expected to navigate a world where there is no alternative?
More importantly, if we follow "don't use websites with ads" logic, we could also logically end up with "don't live here if you don't like the politics".
The way the world is shaped, should be a conversation .. I categorically refuse to put up with a world view that's been put upon me by a bunch companies I had no part in choosing or guiding.
<<but it seems very odd to me how we so easily deny other developers of creating free to use tools just because we think we have some moral higher ground.
In general, I think most people would agree that your right ends when my begin. The moment I send the request and the wheels start spinning to get all the information in, I should be able to decide whether or not something is filtered out. Why do some developers ( and frankly, I do not even think its developers -- its their management ) feel entitled to being able to serve whatever they want on my machine?
What if I just one this one tiny little snippet here?
> More hypocritical than that is that I know many such people who then go to create their apps and as soon as they have enough traffic, they'll add adsense to their apps but keep blocking it in others.
That's not hypocrisy, at least not with only the facts presented. It would only be hypocrisy if they actively speak out against other websites that include ads (or against people that use adblockers on their website).
> No normal person would think to put a hood on their head to still go.
That's actually a pretty rational decision if you need to use the bank but don't want to be on camera.
A lot of sites I visit pop up a box that says, "We noticed you're using an adblocker." I'm perfectly fine with that. My response is to immediately close the tab and move on to other content. They've let me know that they don't want to serve me content that's ad-blocked, and I've let them know that I don't find their content so valuable that I'll suffer the rude interruption.
While I doubt any statistically significant number of people browse the web with a mindset of "I really hope I see some great ads today", I also doubt that most people "don't like websites with ads". IMO, what most people dislike is websites with overly intrusive and distracting ads, ads that attempt to fingerprint the users, or other things that lean towards a user-hostile experience.
Also, by blocking ads and still consuming the content you signal to the content owner/producer that you do in fact value the content. The subtext is that they might have better options to monetize your visit, perhaps through a better layout and ad experience.
IMO the average content publisher would not want a purely binary experience of "browse my ad ridden cotent, or avoid my site altogether". What they want is a monetization strategy that retains enough viewers to be viable. As viewers/readers, we only have so many practical feedback options to tell them what is acceptable or what is not.
Here's a better analogy than a bank: a local club. All your friends go to the club. All your favorite events are at the club. Suddenly, the club starts putting face recognition cameras all over the place. Am I going to stop going? Of course not, all my friends are there! Am I going to "put a hood on [my] head"? Of course I am!
You know what happens in places with video surveillance when you intentionally conceil your identity? Depending on the country it's either illegal or you're asked to leave the premises. You might not like how it is, but it is.
Yep, hence the ad blocking arms race. But my point is that I wouldn't say I'm "hypocritical" or that I'm "breaking [an] agreement" by trying to conceal my identity; in fact, I'm doing the reasonable thing.
> if you don't like websites with ads, don't use websites with ads.
I wish this was a tenable solution as if this were practical it’s exactly what I’d do. As it stands I can’t even use basic web search without ads, or even my banks online banking service!
Even services which I pay for are increasingly getting greedy and showing ads, which is unacceptable.
I do find advertising offensive, but I’m not fundamentally opposed to the concept. In reality though online ads are heavily abused by almost company/individual and I will opt to control my network traffic as I see fit.
To some extent, I agree.
I am far too lazy and morally I feel an obligation to disable adblocking for sites I visit and derive value from. But I always forget or don't bother. So yeah, I'm ripping off those sites.
But my ad blocker's primary purpose is to keep me safe and sane when I stray from my regularly-visited sites. I often do this while checking references at Wikipedia. I have no obligation to feed those sites ad revenue, and they have no right to run/download unwanted content on my system.
> Controversial opinion: if you don't like websites with ads, don't use websites with ads.
Sure as soon as they stop capturing users and content that would have otherwise been on ad-free sites.
> Otherwise you're breaking the agreement that the people hosting what you want to use have to make a living.
There is no agreement. Someone making a living off it is one of the worst reasons to keep a shitty thing around.
> If you consider ads to be psychological assault or other characterizations like this that I've heard before in this forum, stop going to those websites. You think the people that created what you want to use are bad people, infringing on your rights, why would you still use their stuff?
See the first point. Ad-supported websites still affect you even if you don't use the because they compete with and thus influence what other options are available.
First of all, I find it silly to downvote a comment based on a disagreement, and I hope other HNers can use it for what it's for: off topic, spam, misleading and nonsensical comments.
That said, I do disagree with you. The fact of the matter is that most content on the web is monetized by ads. Applying your argument would effectively limit you to a very small fraction of the web.
Content providers choose advertising as a business model because it's easy to integrate and, given enough traffic, pays well. If they would prioritize user experience and protecting their users' privacy, they would choose different, and perhaps less profitable and more difficult to integrate, revenue streams.
Besides, ad blockers don't only serve the purpose of blocking advertising, but tracking scripts in general. Web analytics and user monitoring scripts that track the user to feed data brokers and the shady multi-billion dollar market that exists because of it, is particularly evil.
Also, I'll choose how I want to consume the content that is provided on the open internet, control the bytes that I download and the programs that are allowed to run on _my machine_. If the content provider absolutely wants to get paid for their content, they're free to put up a paywall and block access altogether.
If content providers have the freedom to choose how to monetize, then I have the freedom to choose how to consume.
I wrote this before and I will write it here again.
There is a burger place.
The burger place offers free burgers.
They are able to do this because Big Lettuce pays the burger place to put lettuce in their burger.
When I go and get a burger from the free burger place, what I do is I remove the lettuce from my burger. I just don’t like it.
I made no agreement with the burger place to eat lettuce.
They assume I will. They try to convince me to. They might even try to make the lettuce hard to remove from the burger.
But what has not happened, unlike you are implying, is an agreement that I will consume the lettuce.
I’m not going to stop going to the free burger place. I really like free burgers. And I won’t stop removing lettuce from my burger either. I deeply dislike lettuce.
So, instead of telling me to stop going to the free burger shop because I like removing lettuce, how about you tell the shop to stop giving away free lettuce?
If people really like their burgers, they will pay for them.
If their burgers aren’t really that good and people consume them just because they’re free, maybe the burger place should go out of business.
As ridiculous as this sounds, it makes sense. We tried the business model and it just didn't work out. We need to innovate ways to support content explicitly with some form of payment. The elusive micro-transactions that economists have been begging for for decades now.
If I had an answer for this I’d be pitching my startup somewhere. I honestly don’t know what the alternative will be. But I am sure there is on. Forcing people to consume ads just isn’t sustainable I think.
As I said before, in your hypothetical you would be undermining a business model that is letting a lot of people eat burgers for free, and that would be selfishly making the world worse.
That lettuce company is making revenue somehow, or it will go out of business anyways. In which case the world ends up in exactly the same spot.
So lets make the analogy closer to real life - the lettuce company funds the burger making because everyone MUST eat a salad at least one a day, using lettuce they have paid for with real money. This company wants it to be their lettuce. So they fund the burgers, and make up for it by charging more for their lettuce.
You see my point? Some small subset of folks might end up getting a free burger, but it's at the cost of many other purchasers choosing to buy lettuce with a higher markup.
The lettuce company (ad companies) aren't some fucking fairy tale good guy handing out free stuff - they're very carefully adjusting the habits of shoppers to make MORE money. They are not good - the world is not less good by avoiding them.
Let's try a different reason for the free burgers: the lettuce company makes money by selling information that's (somehow magically) sent to them from inside my mouth while I am eating the lettuce about how I chew, maybe using certain aspects of my mouth and stomach which allows them to isolate me as an individual.
Given all that, they put effort into requiring that their lettuce makes its way to my mouth with a free burger.
Fine, I'll pay for the burger: Big Lettuce is still adamant about getting their tracking lettuce in my body.
One has to go to great lengths to find a burger place that doesn't have a deal with such a lettuce-provider.
Whatever, I'll just take the stupid lettuce off.
(I agree, it's a weird analogy.)
Anyway, the stakes are different with free food vs. free content, so to the point that one is selfishly undermining the ability for others to get content for free: that decision is not what makes the world worse.
If the content is truly worth seeing, it's likely that someone will be inspired to make it as accessible as possible[0], regardless of the lack of potential profit, and other content will become less available.
(Maybe I'll sing a different tune when Khan Academy is overrun with ads.)
You are assuming that the lettuce-funded buger business is the only possible way to provide free food for those in need. Maybe there are government bugers that are just as good but the burger joint they are served in is not as flashy. Maybe there are people who just like making burgers or want to help others and give them away without insisting on you eating lettuce - or they would if the lettuce-funded burger business didn't have exclusive bun contracts with all the local bakeries that they finance with their lettuce income.
Also, don't forget that big lettuce is not subsidizing the burgers out of the goodness of their hearts - they are doing so because they believe it will allow them to capture more wealth overall. Wealth that people could have used to pay for food.
A slaver to his slave: Your attempts at achieving freedom are undermining a business model that is letting a lot of people enjoy cheap clothing, and that would be selfishly making the world worse.
What’s your thoughts on that one? Genuinely curious.
The way I see it, I’m not “making the world worse”. Waving away the can of worms opened by the notion of “making the world better/worse”, I genuinely cannot understand how refusing to consume something makes me selfish.
I’m not selfish for removing lettuce from my burger and I’m not selfish for removing ads. The problem is not with me. The problem is with the business model.
People not liking something drives innovation. Instead of doubling down on something that is not working and telling people “stop being a bad person and consume the ad” perhaps the business should find an alternative way of monetising.
> A slaver to his slave: Your attempts at achieving freedom are undermining a business model that is letting a lot of people enjoy cheap clothing, and that would be selfishly making the world worse.
This ignores harm of slavery to the slave, but in both the online ads case and your burger hypothetical there are no analogs to the slave.
> I genuinely cannot understand how refusing to consume something makes me selfish.
The argument is pretty straightforward. In your hypothetical, hunger has been mostly solved: everyone can eat as many burgers as they want. But this solution is fragile, and rests on people consuming the lettuce that comes with the burgers. By choosing to remove your lettuce, you increase the risk that this falls apart and we'll be back to the status quo where some people are hungry, and others spend a substantial portion of their income on food.
I am literally harmed by ads. In my case, I suffer from internet addiction you see and those extra load seconds and interruptions are deeply harmful to me. They trigger anxiety and panic attacks.
But that’s just me. Other people are harmed way more! Maybe you can wave away my ad inducted anxiety but can you wave away people with epilepsy? Can you wave away people with ADHD? Can you wave away people with accessibility needs? Can you wave away people unwillingly outed as lgbt by the ads they are served? Can you wave away predatory ads? Can you wave away “making the world worse” through ad enabled miss information?
As for lettuce I am allergic to it. I will literally die if I don’t remove it.
> As for lettuce I am allergic to it. I will literally die if I don’t remove it.
If you're allergic to lettuce, it's very risky to eat a burger that has previously been contaminated by lettuce. Perhaps consider eating anything else?
I think the ad situation is much more complex than your hypothetical, and blocking ads for accessibility reasons is fine. But calls for everyone to block ads, even if they aren't "allergic", are calls for an end to free ad-supported things online, which includes the website we're currently using.
More hypocritical than that is that I know many such people who then go to create their apps and as soon as they have enough traffic, they'll add adsense to their apps but keep blocking it in others. There's also the argument that you block ads due to privacy, again here I'd say, don't use those websites. If you know there's a security camera at the bank branch and you don't want to be recorded, you don't go to the bank branch, no normal person would think to put a hood on their head to still go.
I bet this is going to get downvoted to shit, because I've been in HN for a few years and it's predictable where the crowd goes, but it seems very odd to me how we so easily deny other developers of creating free to use tools just because we think we have some moral higher ground.