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.
1. If someone doesn't want their content to be publicly available, they should not put it on a public web server.[0]
2. The question should not be whether ad blocking is ethical, but whether it is a moral obligation.[1]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew
[1] https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/10/why-its-ok-to-...