5 ms·

I noticed the moralistic hand wringing about the propriety of ad blockers.

freehunter 11y ago
Which is odd, it seems like people who are outspoken against ad blockers are either becoming more numerous or are becoming louder. I recently had a conversation here where someone was arguing that ad blocking is akin to MP3 pirating: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10222013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10222013
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- scintill76 11y ago
  Even a few months ago, I was kind of like that. Then I started thinking about it in terms of my own "autonomy", for lack of a better word -- what gives them the right to "force" my browser to make extra requests to download and display ads, to use my home network for that, to use my bandwidth and data cap for it, to use my CPU, to use my eyes and brain to look and understand the ad. They have no technical ability to enforce some of that, and any agreement that viewing ads is "payment" is implicit and thus the moral argument is weak. They don't even implement some technical measures they could do, such as YouTube bundling video ads directly into the stream so it would be harder to detect and block, so maybe they don't really care enough either. At some point it starts sounding too much like "it's stealing to watch broadcast TV if you mute your TV and look away from the screen during ads", and hopefully most people would say that position is insane. (And yes, I do recognize that automatic blocking is a bit different, but at the same time, sending instructions that your computer download and display something to you is different than changing the radio waves from a representation of a show to a representation of an ad.) It only works because the majority of TV watchers and internet users are too lazy or unskilled to block ads. When the majority are blocking ads, the model will either change, or blocking be explicitly criminalized (a session of Congress I'd pay to watch.)
  - freehunter 11y ago
    Courts have ruled that Tivo automatically skipping ads is perfectly okay. That's literally automating the activity you're talking about! So yeah, not really any different.
    - scintill76 11y ago
      Maybe relevant case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_Network,_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_N... It's a bit more complicated since it involves a contract between the provider of the ad-skipping device and the content creator. Hmm, it could get interesting if contracts arose between browser vendors and advertisers.

Which is odd, it seems like people who are outspoken against ad blockers are either becoming more numerous or are becoming louder. I recently had a conversation here where someone was arguing that ad blocking is akin to MP3 pirating: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10222013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10222013

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
scintill76 11y ago
Even a few months ago, I was kind of like that. Then I started thinking about it in terms of my own "autonomy", for lack of a better word -- what gives them the right to "force" my browser to make extra requests to download and display ads, to use my home network for that, to use my bandwidth and data cap for it, to use my CPU, to use my eyes and brain to look and understand the ad. They have no technical ability to enforce some of that, and any agreement that viewing ads is "payment" is implicit and thus the moral argument is weak. They don't even implement some technical measures they could do, such as YouTube bundling video ads directly into the stream so it would be harder to detect and block, so maybe they don't really care enough either. At some point it starts sounding too much like "it's stealing to watch broadcast TV if you mute your TV and look away from the screen during ads", and hopefully most people would say that position is insane. (And yes, I do recognize that automatic blocking is a bit different, but at the same time, sending instructions that your computer download and display something to you is different than changing the radio waves from a representation of a show to a representation of an ad.) It only works because the majority of TV watchers and internet users are too lazy or unskilled to block ads. When the majority are blocking ads, the model will either change, or blocking be explicitly criminalized (a session of Congress I'd pay to watch.)
- freehunter 11y ago
  Courts have ruled that Tivo automatically skipping ads is perfectly okay. That's literally automating the activity you're talking about! So yeah, not really any different.
  - scintill76 11y ago
    Maybe relevant case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_Network,_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_N... It's a bit more complicated since it involves a contract between the provider of the ad-skipping device and the content creator. Hmm, it could get interesting if contracts arose between browser vendors and advertisers.