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.
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.