8 ms·

Ethical Adblocking

28 points by westi 11y ago

mariusz79 11y ago
There is too much crappy content (including this comment) on the web anyway. If the websites can't find another revenue stream .... too bad. I won't miss them.
markyc 11y ago
you can watch street performers for an hour and then leave without leaving a cent. it's perfectly legal, but not cool
pavel_lishin 11y ago
I'd like to see a whitelist option happen, like AdBlock currently does - but more transparent. Ad networks/providers that have shown themselves to be trustworthy, secure, compact and not-annoying ought to be able to show me ads - plain ads that I can scroll past, nothing that pops up, or stick around while I scroll - while the egregious offenders ought to be blacklisted until they go out of business.
- hullo 11y ago
  Well, yes, but the thing is while we care, and might want to craft a whitelist or put consideration into our choices, the majority of folks are going to search for ad blocker, choose the first one, and start enjoying the web without ads. Then they're going to wonder why they never did it on desktop? And then they're going to do it on the desktop. The genie, once out of the bottle, will not choose to return.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    Oh, in my perfect world, while end-users would be able to modify the list, it would ship with one by default. 99% of users wouldn't know or care it was even there.
jbob2000 11y ago
Ethical Adblocking? Is adblocking a moral issue now? We're going to put it up there with assisted suicide and abortion? Is it really that life or death?
- bediger4000 11y ago
  I'm a stakeholder here, so let me just say that ad blocking is NOT an ethical issue: it's my hardware, and I get to decide what to run on it or not. End of story because property rights. There's a collision coming between the Kopyright Krazies and the Anti-Ad-Blockers. They want two different things. Or maybe not, maybe there will be an alliance to eliminate control over the computers that you and I own. Anti-Ad-Blockers: your computer must run what I want it to run. Kopyright Krazies: your commputer must not run what I don't want it to run. That's a bullshit situation, by the way.
- 88e282102ae2e5b 11y ago
  "Ethical" doesn't always imply "extremely important". It's not ethical to cheat on a test, and it too fails the "assisted suicide and abortion" test of importance.
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wahsd 11y ago
I have a feeling we have surpassed the opportunity for the industry to appeal to ethical ad blocking. I for one even think ads can play a role in society to disperse information, but hell, every time I try to both use the unintrusive white lists or even dare to totally disable blockers it triggers massive rage.
slight 11y ago
This site has a problematic design.. I couldn't see anything but a logo and a searchbox on my laptop (720p-ish).
- xkcd-sucks 11y ago
  Have you tried disabling your adblocker?
  - anc84 11y ago
    She meant the initial state of the site with seems to fill the whole screen with "not the article".
  - deleted 11y ago
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- dublinben 11y ago
  It's not just you, there's a massive header above the article. You'll have to scroll down to actually read anything.
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- hullo 11y ago
  It's pretty clear you didn't read the article. You should try it! I think he agrees with you.
- deleted 11y ago
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Zikes 11y ago
I'll take Mister Gruber's dare: it's my device, it's my bandwidth, and they're my eyeballs.
- eli 11y ago
  I can't really speak for him, but I think "by default" is an important part of that dare. That the people who are complaining about ads are mostly not bothered by Deck ads, but Deck ads are blocked by default along with far more obnoxious ads.
srdev 11y ago
> Once the adblocker is installed, once web-ads have been poisoned by years of bad practices, ads aren’t coming back. That's really the crux of the matter. Advertisers and the sites using them had a chance to show us that they could do this in a responsible manner that took user experience into consideration. They demonstrated that they would engage in as much user-hostile advertising as they could get away with. So my ad-blocker went from having a carefully curated whitelist to a blanket banning with no exceptions. They had their chance and they blew it.
- hollerith 11y ago
  If I was a responsible advertiser over the last 20 years, I had absolutely no chance to prevent irresponsible people from becoming member of the group you refer to as "advertisers" -- and, at least in the US, if I tried I would probably run afoul of anti-trust or other laws -- so it does not make much sense to say that I "had my chance". There are good arguments for ad blockers, but treating a collection of independent market participants as if they were a single person or a coherent group able to enforce norms on its members is not one. I guess you could argue that Google and Facebook controlled enough of the market that if they acted in concert, they could have prevented the current situation, but they certainly would have faced strident accusations from advertisers of anti-competitive behavior and would have attracted the interest of regulators. (And if that is your argument, you should say so.) ADDED. Over the 20 years since the start of advertising on the internet, the actors with the best chance to have headed off the current situation were the maintainers of the popular web browsers, but saying that they had their chance does not help shift the moral high ground from responsible advertisers to users of ad blockers.
  - srdev 11y ago
    From my perspective as a user, it doesn't matter. If the ad networks and their customers are unable to enforce standards on their advertisers, then I have no choice but to block them. Making it my responsibility is not an option. Its not possible to enforce compliance with some sort of ethical standards industry-wide, but it is possible to at least encourage it, especially if you are a large player like Facebook or Google. From my perspective, they don't even appear to be trying. > I guess you could argue that Google and Facebook controlled enough of the market that if they acted in concert, they could have prevented the current situation, but they certainly would have faced strident accusations from advertisers of anti-competitive behavior and would have attracted the interest of regulators. (And if that is your argument, you should say so.) Its not clear to me that this is the case. Simply enforcing standards on ads is not the same as limiting competition. Its an issue of a corporation deciding to not carry your content because it does not pass some presumably published and neutral guidelines. At the very least, it is not as clear-cut as you are making it sound.
wanderfowl 11y ago
There was a time when the industry could have prevented the rise of widespread adblocking with "ethical advertising", which wasn't user-hostile, risky, creepy, intrusive, tracking, bandwidth and power heavy and didn't trash the UX of the sites. But, they didn't. So, now, the ad industry trying to talk to the rest of the world about the ethics of blocking ads is like the drunk uncle who puked on last year's Thanksgiving Turkey talking to the family about the "ethics" of not inviting him this year. Sure, it's a sad situation, but you probably should've thought about that before you puked on the turkey. If the ad guys spend a few years ensuring that advertisting is safe, lightweight, unobtrusive, non-creepy, and fast, maybe we'll invite you back to the party someday, and start to consider web advertising less of a threat-to-be-blocked. But for now, we're not taking that risk. Sorry guys, but you've earned it.
- eli 11y ago
  >If the ad guys spend a few years ensuring that advertisting is safe, lightweight, unobtrusive, non-creepy, and fast,... Isn't that the point Gruber was making his Deck ads? Or do you not think those qualify? There is no monolithic "ad industry" ... it's a bunch of people and companies with different methods and objectives and values.
  - wanderfowl 11y ago
    This is a perfect case for disruption. Make a company whose ads are so unobtrusive, so free of tracking, so non-creepy, and so fast that I would actually want to unblock them specifically. Gruber's on that, which is great, but 99% of the rest of the ad industry is full of everything wrong with it, and there's no guarantees Gruber's service won't start running malware tomorrow. If there's a door open to a room that's filled with 9900 assholes and 100 decent people, even though it's not fair to the 100, it's still a good idea to shut the door. Similarly, right now, the best bet is to set your adblockers in the least permissive way possible. EDIT: Also, with regards to the decentralized "ad industry", look at what happened in the spam/commercial email industry. The bad companies have been chased out, and the good ones are well regulated. That was many disparate groups, but along with improvements in spam blocking, they've proved themselves ready to sit at the adults table. Advertisers now have a chance to do the same, and Adblock will help us keep them honest.
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vinceguidry 11y ago
The frontier is run by strongmen, as it gets settled, you need stronger rulers. But because there's not enough there to interest the big players back home to bring in infrastructure and big-city politics, these services wind up being provided by the mob, autonomous players far enough away from civilization to avoid the law, strong enough to enforce their vision, even on the strongmen. As the frontier gets more and more settled, the big players gradually make their way in. Civilization is huge and it takes time to build. The big players have to work with the old strongmen because they don't have enough boots on the ground yet to enforce order. That's the position Apple is in right now with their content-blocking API. Ad blocking companies are the mob running the web content frontier towns, the ad companies are all the ruffians trying to make a quick buck. Apple is starting to build railroads and bank branches and hotels and courthouses and cultivate property developers, but the mob is still there and they have to be dealt with, otherwise the problem the mob solved is going to bite them in the ass.
anc84 11y ago
There is no mention of third-party tracking in this which to me is an instant criteria for unethical treatment of your users.
javery 11y ago
Here are my thoughts from the ad industry side: http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/ad-blocking-will-keep-growing-until-we-make-ads-better-2/ http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/ad-blocking-will... I think there is a chance to make it better, ad blocking is not yet maintsteam and I think there is a room for a blockers that will only block "bad" ads.
- wanderfowl 11y ago
  This is well and good, but there's a trust issue. Last time we let you guys have free reign, you created a user-hostile hellscape of tracking and intrusive ads, and sold ads to the highest malware-pushingest bidder. After you guys messed the whole thing up so badly the first time, why would we want to re-open the doors at all? "It's OK guys, this time we'll be good for realsies!" just doesn't cut it. As much as I feel for the people involved, I just don't see a compelling reason for your industry to be given a second chance and continue existing at anywhere near its current scale. An evolution of business models away from web advertising is what we need to bet on, rather than a pinky-swear from the people who got us into this mess in the first place.
  - javery 11y ago
    I definitely understand that perspective - and to be clear there are good ad providers out there, we just haven't been winning the war in our own industry. I don't think a pinky swear would work either, but I think if the browsers can enforce better standards we would be able to move forward. Of course the problem there is that the largest advertising company in the world owns the most popular browser in the world. An ad blocker that only blocks bad advertising would be a good way to encourage this. I wish a form of micro-payments or subscription would work, but most publishers have found little luck with this. (look at all the people here who complain about a paywalled link, or find a way around it)
    - wanderfowl 11y ago
      "An ad blocker that only blocks bad advertising" is a great idea, but it relies on easily faked characteristics. I'd love to see an industry group which focuses on authenticating non-harmful ads in a provable way, and thus, ad blockers could load only the least-worst stuff in a trustable way. But you've still got a ways to go before you can convince me that there are "good" ads, rather than just non-bad ones. I'd also love to see laws passed which make websites legally liable for malware served on them by ad networks, which would incentivize sites to use only good companies.
dil8 11y ago
Ethical adblocking = Blocking all ads
vlucas 11y ago
I really don't get this moral argument at all. Websites don't have the right to use 5x my already severely limited mobile bandwidth on pure crap that I don't need. They have the right to put trackers and crap ads on their page, sure - but I also have the right to block them. * TV channels have the right to put annoying ads in, but I have the right to mute them, look away, change the channel, skip them if previously recorded, etc. * Movies have the right to insert pre-roll ads and previews, but I have the right to skip them or come to a movie 15 minutes later than listed showtime to ensure I miss them. * Newspapers and magazines have the right to put ads in, but I have the right to cut them out or fold the page over so I don't have to look at them while reading the article. No amount of these shaky moral arguments are going to make me change my mind about intrusive advertising and tracking. There is no contract or promise between me and the website that I am visiting that I will be captive to their ads or behavior tracking, implied or otherwise - just like in any other other media format. People absolutely have the right to block them, and they absolutely have the right to install software that helps improve their privacy.
- kllrnohj 11y ago
  That's because you're talking about "rights" not "morals". I have the right to call you an asshole but it wouldn't be moral. Mods have the right to ban everyone with ideas they don't like but it wouldn't be moral. You do have the right to demand something from someone for free. You do have the right to go to every store in the city and empty every "take a penny leave a penny" tray. But having the right to do it and it being moral are very, very different things.
  - vlucas 11y ago
    But I am not making any demands at all. Publishers are offering their content for free, and I sometimes take them up on their offer and read it. It's an offer that started with the publisher, not a demand that came from me. Are you saying it is moral for publishers to track my usage behavior, and to force me to watch any ad they want me to?
    - phpnode 11y ago
Guthur 11y ago
Caveat Emptor: I run adblocking. Ad blocking is not unethical; in most cases there is no agreement from the provider of the website and the consumer to say that the consumer must watch the adverts, it's just not there. It is not the adblockers fault that the websites business model is dependent on ad revenue that's the provider's decision. If the lose of web content happens because of adblocking it's still not the adblockers responsibility, there was no agreement.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Ethical ad-blocking is to block any and all ads that you don't want to receive. Shouldn't we be discussing the limits of ethical advertising?
  - mrob 11y ago
    The only ethical advertising is a factual text description and a price. Computer Shopper magazine used to be full of this. Any more advanced advertising is specifically designed to undermine human rationality. It's an act of aggression similar to forcibly drugging people.
    - JulianMorrison 11y ago
      I'd expand the scope of "good advertising" to any and all factual non-manipulative details about the product - pictures, features, tradeoff decisions made, intended use, impartial ratings, and so on.
    - mokus 11y ago
      A thousand times this. If you want revenue for my view, ask me for some money. I'm happy to pay for content that is useful or entertaining, so give me the chance. But name your price in terms of some currency. My eyes, my choices, and my browsing habits are not for sale, and that's not negotiable.
rip747 11y ago
I block ads for one reason only: I don't want malware.. period.. the end. The day ad companies actually have a conscience and won't sell to malware authors, is the day i'll stop blocking their ads.
forgetsusername 11y ago
>"I think if your Safari Content Blocker blocks The Deck by default, it’s wrong. I dare you to defend it." Hilarious. Okay: I decide what comes up my pipe, into my house, and appears on my screen; opt-in. If you have a problem with me "free-loading", then put your content behind a paywall and I'll decide if it's worth my money.
- hullo 11y ago
  Gruber isn't presenting his argument (such as a tweet so simple could be considered an argument) to end consumers - he's attempting to use his influence on (iOS) mobile developers who are creating content blockers - and this is an audience he does have a fair amount of influence on. But again, the genie once escaping the bottle will have chosen to smash it, not to return.
- nattaylor 11y ago
  Let's assume the market isn't in a place where most sites can put up paywalls, since users will just turn to free alternatives. This is debatable, but not my point. If the site had an "opt-in to ads" modal (which set a cookie or something,) would you ever accept?
  - Spivak 11y ago
    > since users will just turn to free alternatives If there are completely free alternatives which are an acceptable replacement how are you going to compete in the first place? I would never accept that opt-in for an ever growing list of reasons but I'm also the person who donates to sites I like.
  - forgetsusername 11y ago
    >If the site had an "opt-in to ads" modal (which set a cookie or something,) would you ever accept? No. Maybe I'm jaded from years and years of terrible, manipulative advertising on all forms of media, but no. But that's no reason to require "opt-out".
AdmiralAsshat 11y ago
A webcomic from twelve years ago summarized my feeling on ad tracking: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/19 http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/19 Of course back then we called it "spyware," but apparently now it's the more consumer-friendly "interest-based acquisition and aggregation you tacitly agreed to when you decided to visit our website."
s_kilk 11y ago
Nope, it's all going in a black hole, no exceptions.
JulianMorrison 11y ago
Ethical adblocking is all of them gone forever. I want advertising to cease to exist.
- wanderfowl 11y ago
  That's one of the problems I have in this debate. "How can we have the best advertising possible?" includes the premise "We should have advertising", which is probably not true, for the very best values of society. It's one way to monetize the world, but not the only way, I hope desperately that I see a day when ad companies are remembered like telegraph companies.
cbd1984 11y ago
Here's an interesting part I'm going to use to illustrate a larger point: > whether those services are free through ads or are entirely paid. It isn't this simple. I pay for a newspaper, I still get ads. The fact the newsstand price is too low for them to give it to me ad-free isn't really up to me; they don't offer an ad-free option, even at a higher price. Magazines are the same way. So are a lot of premium pay TV channels. So's SiriusXM. My point is, I can't trust them to not run ads. Even if I'm paying them directly, they still have the option to shove ads down my eye-holes. I can't effectively block ads anywhere but online, so that's what I do. Everywhere else, regardless of what I pay, I still get ads.
irl_zebra 11y ago
I should be able to choose what I see on my computer, especially when I'm paying for bandwidth. But this has already been said. What I find laughable is the author's warning at the end that essentially boils down to: If you keep blocking ads, the alternative will be much worse, so you better not block ads...or else! "What’s more likely is that web ads are going to get way worse, adblocking is going to go way up, and at some point in this arms race, after the death of many a media company, eventually some will indeed have adapted. The big question is whether you’ll like the alternatives. It can be apps. It can be inside Apple’s Newsstand (featuring unblockable ads). It can be inside Facebooks instant articles. It can be subversive native ads. It can be paywalls. Think in-app purchases: 'Pay $1 for this article, or pay by watching a video.'"
- manicdee 11y ago
  Unblockable ads, using Apple's Newsstand delivery vehicle? How long will that last before Apple is kicking the content provider's arse to kingdom come?
lostcolony 11y ago
What ads blockers and ad companies should do is work to create an opt in whitelist, that is socially decided upon by the blockers' users. That is, allow an opt in to use a socially decided upon whitelist, along with your personal whitelist. As users allow ads on certain sites, let them also indicate "this ad should be shown to everyone; it's not annoying/it's acceptable enough to allow". If enough users do that, allow it to be shown. If that triggers a large enough backlash amongst users, remove it from the whitelist, and prevent it from being re-added to the whitelist (though individuals can still whitelist it individually). That way, non-obtrusive, background ads can be slowly turned on for those who opt in to allow it. If someone tries to engineer the whitelisting of an ad that people find objectionable, it will be removed by all the people re-blocking it. If a user finds the ads being allowed, in total, are too irritating, they can remove the social whitelist entirely. And those who simply want no ads need not opt in to the whitelist.
sleepychu 11y ago
I'll never forget a conversation I had with one of Amazon's devs about real-time ad bidding. When you load(possibly -ed not sure if this is still the case) a page Google says to it's advertisers "Ok, how much will you pay for an advert to be served to this id" and they had some tiny number of ms to respond based on the data they'd collected about that user. The article author rejects that mass adoption of adblocking will cause the advertising industry to come back with a better deal that doesn't include egregious privacy invasion and that it will in fact just kill small media companies relying on advertising revenue. The two are not mutually exclusive, it's a shame that some companies will inevitably fall through the gap but as others have pointed out this doesn't create a moral obligation to you to accept the current 'deal' ad companies are offering. Don't fall for this crap, mass surveillance by advertisers must die.
imgabe 11y ago
This is not an ethical issue. You don't get to just send whatever information you want to my computer because you paid some underemployed 20-something 50 bucks to slap together a listicle. If publishers want people to look at ads, then provide useful, non-obnoxious ads. I have precisely two sites whitelisted in adblock, Penny Arcade and Reddit. Both are known for screening their ads to be unobtrusive and relevant to their audience.
josefresco 11y ago
Charging for ads based on impressions or views keeps the costs high, the industry inflated and ad people safe in their jobs. If the ads were tied to actions (clicks, sales etc.) the costs would plummet and many ad people would lose their jobs. It's one thing to say "Your ad was viewed 10,000 times" and another to say "Your ad got 100 clicks".

28 points by westi 11y ago

There is too much crappy content (including this comment) on the web anyway. If the websites can't find another revenue stream .... too bad. I won't miss them.

markyc 11y ago

you can watch street performers for an hour and then leave without leaving a cent. it's perfectly legal, but not cool

pavel_lishin 11y ago

I'd like to see a whitelist option happen, like AdBlock currently does - but more transparent. Ad networks/providers that have shown themselves to be trustworthy, secure, compact and not-annoying ought to be able to show me ads - plain ads that I can scroll past, nothing that pops up, or stick around while I scroll - while the egregious offenders ought to be blacklisted until they go out of business.

hullo 11y ago
Well, yes, but the thing is while we care, and might want to craft a whitelist or put consideration into our choices, the majority of folks are going to search for ad blocker, choose the first one, and start enjoying the web without ads. Then they're going to wonder why they never did it on desktop? And then they're going to do it on the desktop. The genie, once out of the bottle, will not choose to return.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  Oh, in my perfect world, while end-users would be able to modify the list, it would ship with one by default. 99% of users wouldn't know or care it was even there.

jbob2000 11y ago

Ethical Adblocking? Is adblocking a moral issue now? We're going to put it up there with assisted suicide and abortion? Is it really that life or death?

bediger4000 11y ago
I'm a stakeholder here, so let me just say that ad blocking is NOT an ethical issue: it's my hardware, and I get to decide what to run on it or not. End of story because property rights. There's a collision coming between the Kopyright Krazies and the Anti-Ad-Blockers. They want two different things. Or maybe not, maybe there will be an alliance to eliminate control over the computers that you and I own. Anti-Ad-Blockers: your computer must run what I want it to run. Kopyright Krazies: your commputer must not run what I don't want it to run. That's a bullshit situation, by the way.
88e282102ae2e5b 11y ago
"Ethical" doesn't always imply "extremely important". It's not ethical to cheat on a test, and it too fails the "assisted suicide and abortion" test of importance.

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wahsd 11y ago

I have a feeling we have surpassed the opportunity for the industry to appeal to ethical ad blocking. I for one even think ads can play a role in society to disperse information, but hell, every time I try to both use the unintrusive white lists or even dare to totally disable blockers it triggers massive rage.

slight 11y ago

This site has a problematic design.. I couldn't see anything but a logo and a searchbox on my laptop (720p-ish).

xkcd-sucks 11y ago
Have you tried disabling your adblocker?
- anc84 11y ago
  She meant the initial state of the site with seems to fill the whole screen with "not the article".
- deleted 11y ago
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dublinben 11y ago
It's not just you, there's a massive header above the article. You'll have to scroll down to actually read anything.

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hullo 11y ago
It's pretty clear you didn't read the article. You should try it! I think he agrees with you.
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Zikes 11y ago

I'll take Mister Gruber's dare: it's my device, it's my bandwidth, and they're my eyeballs.

eli 11y ago
I can't really speak for him, but I think "by default" is an important part of that dare. That the people who are complaining about ads are mostly not bothered by Deck ads, but Deck ads are blocked by default along with far more obnoxious ads.

srdev 11y ago

> Once the adblocker is installed, once web-ads have been poisoned by years of bad practices, ads aren’t coming back. That's really the crux of the matter. Advertisers and the sites using them had a chance to show us that they could do this in a responsible manner that took user experience into consideration. They demonstrated that they would engage in as much user-hostile advertising as they could get away with. So my ad-blocker went from having a carefully curated whitelist to a blanket banning with no exceptions. They had their chance and they blew it.

hollerith 11y ago
If I was a responsible advertiser over the last 20 years, I had absolutely no chance to prevent irresponsible people from becoming member of the group you refer to as "advertisers" -- and, at least in the US, if I tried I would probably run afoul of anti-trust or other laws -- so it does not make much sense to say that I "had my chance". There are good arguments for ad blockers, but treating a collection of independent market participants as if they were a single person or a coherent group able to enforce norms on its members is not one. I guess you could argue that Google and Facebook controlled enough of the market that if they acted in concert, they could have prevented the current situation, but they certainly would have faced strident accusations from advertisers of anti-competitive behavior and would have attracted the interest of regulators. (And if that is your argument, you should say so.) ADDED. Over the 20 years since the start of advertising on the internet, the actors with the best chance to have headed off the current situation were the maintainers of the popular web browsers, but saying that they had their chance does not help shift the moral high ground from responsible advertisers to users of ad blockers.
- srdev 11y ago
  From my perspective as a user, it doesn't matter. If the ad networks and their customers are unable to enforce standards on their advertisers, then I have no choice but to block them. Making it my responsibility is not an option. Its not possible to enforce compliance with some sort of ethical standards industry-wide, but it is possible to at least encourage it, especially if you are a large player like Facebook or Google. From my perspective, they don't even appear to be trying. > I guess you could argue that Google and Facebook controlled enough of the market that if they acted in concert, they could have prevented the current situation, but they certainly would have faced strident accusations from advertisers of anti-competitive behavior and would have attracted the interest of regulators. (And if that is your argument, you should say so.) Its not clear to me that this is the case. Simply enforcing standards on ads is not the same as limiting competition. Its an issue of a corporation deciding to not carry your content because it does not pass some presumably published and neutral guidelines. At the very least, it is not as clear-cut as you are making it sound.

wanderfowl 11y ago

There was a time when the industry could have prevented the rise of widespread adblocking with "ethical advertising", which wasn't user-hostile, risky, creepy, intrusive, tracking, bandwidth and power heavy and didn't trash the UX of the sites. But, they didn't. So, now, the ad industry trying to talk to the rest of the world about the ethics of blocking ads is like the drunk uncle who puked on last year's Thanksgiving Turkey talking to the family about the "ethics" of not inviting him this year. Sure, it's a sad situation, but you probably should've thought about that before you puked on the turkey. If the ad guys spend a few years ensuring that advertisting is safe, lightweight, unobtrusive, non-creepy, and fast, maybe we'll invite you back to the party someday, and start to consider web advertising less of a threat-to-be-blocked. But for now, we're not taking that risk. Sorry guys, but you've earned it.

eli 11y ago
>If the ad guys spend a few years ensuring that advertisting is safe, lightweight, unobtrusive, non-creepy, and fast,... Isn't that the point Gruber was making his Deck ads? Or do you not think those qualify? There is no monolithic "ad industry" ... it's a bunch of people and companies with different methods and objectives and values.
- wanderfowl 11y ago
  This is a perfect case for disruption. Make a company whose ads are so unobtrusive, so free of tracking, so non-creepy, and so fast that I would actually want to unblock them specifically. Gruber's on that, which is great, but 99% of the rest of the ad industry is full of everything wrong with it, and there's no guarantees Gruber's service won't start running malware tomorrow. If there's a door open to a room that's filled with 9900 assholes and 100 decent people, even though it's not fair to the 100, it's still a good idea to shut the door. Similarly, right now, the best bet is to set your adblockers in the least permissive way possible. EDIT: Also, with regards to the decentralized "ad industry", look at what happened in the spam/commercial email industry. The bad companies have been chased out, and the good ones are well regulated. That was many disparate groups, but along with improvements in spam blocking, they've proved themselves ready to sit at the adults table. Advertisers now have a chance to do the same, and Adblock will help us keep them honest.

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vinceguidry 11y ago

The frontier is run by strongmen, as it gets settled, you need stronger rulers. But because there's not enough there to interest the big players back home to bring in infrastructure and big-city politics, these services wind up being provided by the mob, autonomous players far enough away from civilization to avoid the law, strong enough to enforce their vision, even on the strongmen. As the frontier gets more and more settled, the big players gradually make their way in. Civilization is huge and it takes time to build. The big players have to work with the old strongmen because they don't have enough boots on the ground yet to enforce order. That's the position Apple is in right now with their content-blocking API. Ad blocking companies are the mob running the web content frontier towns, the ad companies are all the ruffians trying to make a quick buck. Apple is starting to build railroads and bank branches and hotels and courthouses and cultivate property developers, but the mob is still there and they have to be dealt with, otherwise the problem the mob solved is going to bite them in the ass.

anc84 11y ago

There is no mention of third-party tracking in this which to me is an instant criteria for unethical treatment of your users.

javery 11y ago

Here are my thoughts from the ad industry side: http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/ad-blocking-will-keep-growing-until-we-make-ads-better-2/ http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/ad-blocking-will... I think there is a chance to make it better, ad blocking is not yet maintsteam and I think there is a room for a blockers that will only block "bad" ads.

wanderfowl 11y ago
This is well and good, but there's a trust issue. Last time we let you guys have free reign, you created a user-hostile hellscape of tracking and intrusive ads, and sold ads to the highest malware-pushingest bidder. After you guys messed the whole thing up so badly the first time, why would we want to re-open the doors at all? "It's OK guys, this time we'll be good for realsies!" just doesn't cut it. As much as I feel for the people involved, I just don't see a compelling reason for your industry to be given a second chance and continue existing at anywhere near its current scale. An evolution of business models away from web advertising is what we need to bet on, rather than a pinky-swear from the people who got us into this mess in the first place.
- javery 11y ago
  I definitely understand that perspective - and to be clear there are good ad providers out there, we just haven't been winning the war in our own industry. I don't think a pinky swear would work either, but I think if the browsers can enforce better standards we would be able to move forward. Of course the problem there is that the largest advertising company in the world owns the most popular browser in the world. An ad blocker that only blocks bad advertising would be a good way to encourage this. I wish a form of micro-payments or subscription would work, but most publishers have found little luck with this. (look at all the people here who complain about a paywalled link, or find a way around it)
  - wanderfowl 11y ago
    "An ad blocker that only blocks bad advertising" is a great idea, but it relies on easily faked characteristics. I'd love to see an industry group which focuses on authenticating non-harmful ads in a provable way, and thus, ad blockers could load only the least-worst stuff in a trustable way. But you've still got a ways to go before you can convince me that there are "good" ads, rather than just non-bad ones. I'd also love to see laws passed which make websites legally liable for malware served on them by ad networks, which would incentivize sites to use only good companies.

dil8 11y ago

Ethical adblocking = Blocking all ads

vlucas 11y ago

I really don't get this moral argument at all. Websites don't have the right to use 5x my already severely limited mobile bandwidth on pure crap that I don't need. They have the right to put trackers and crap ads on their page, sure - but I also have the right to block them. * TV channels have the right to put annoying ads in, but I have the right to mute them, look away, change the channel, skip them if previously recorded, etc. * Movies have the right to insert pre-roll ads and previews, but I have the right to skip them or come to a movie 15 minutes later than listed showtime to ensure I miss them. * Newspapers and magazines have the right to put ads in, but I have the right to cut them out or fold the page over so I don't have to look at them while reading the article. No amount of these shaky moral arguments are going to make me change my mind about intrusive advertising and tracking. There is no contract or promise between me and the website that I am visiting that I will be captive to their ads or behavior tracking, implied or otherwise - just like in any other other media format. People absolutely have the right to block them, and they absolutely have the right to install software that helps improve their privacy.

kllrnohj 11y ago
That's because you're talking about "rights" not "morals". I have the right to call you an asshole but it wouldn't be moral. Mods have the right to ban everyone with ideas they don't like but it wouldn't be moral. You do have the right to demand something from someone for free. You do have the right to go to every store in the city and empty every "take a penny leave a penny" tray. But having the right to do it and it being moral are very, very different things.
- vlucas 11y ago
  But I am not making any demands at all. Publishers are offering their content for free, and I sometimes take them up on their offer and read it. It's an offer that started with the publisher, not a demand that came from me. Are you saying it is moral for publishers to track my usage behavior, and to force me to watch any ad they want me to?
  - phpnode 11y ago

Guthur 11y ago

Caveat Emptor: I run adblocking. Ad blocking is not unethical; in most cases there is no agreement from the provider of the website and the consumer to say that the consumer must watch the adverts, it's just not there. It is not the adblockers fault that the websites business model is dependent on ad revenue that's the provider's decision. If the lose of web content happens because of adblocking it's still not the adblockers responsibility, there was no agreement.

logfromblammo 11y ago
Ethical ad-blocking is to block any and all ads that you don't want to receive. Shouldn't we be discussing the limits of ethical advertising?
- mrob 11y ago
  The only ethical advertising is a factual text description and a price. Computer Shopper magazine used to be full of this. Any more advanced advertising is specifically designed to undermine human rationality. It's an act of aggression similar to forcibly drugging people.
  - JulianMorrison 11y ago
    I'd expand the scope of "good advertising" to any and all factual non-manipulative details about the product - pictures, features, tradeoff decisions made, intended use, impartial ratings, and so on.
  - mokus 11y ago
    A thousand times this. If you want revenue for my view, ask me for some money. I'm happy to pay for content that is useful or entertaining, so give me the chance. But name your price in terms of some currency. My eyes, my choices, and my browsing habits are not for sale, and that's not negotiable.

rip747 11y ago

I block ads for one reason only: I don't want malware.. period.. the end. The day ad companies actually have a conscience and won't sell to malware authors, is the day i'll stop blocking their ads.

forgetsusername 11y ago

>"I think if your Safari Content Blocker blocks The Deck by default, it’s wrong. I dare you to defend it." Hilarious. Okay: I decide what comes up my pipe, into my house, and appears on my screen; opt-in. If you have a problem with me "free-loading", then put your content behind a paywall and I'll decide if it's worth my money.

hullo 11y ago
Gruber isn't presenting his argument (such as a tweet so simple could be considered an argument) to end consumers - he's attempting to use his influence on (iOS) mobile developers who are creating content blockers - and this is an audience he does have a fair amount of influence on. But again, the genie once escaping the bottle will have chosen to smash it, not to return.
nattaylor 11y ago
Let's assume the market isn't in a place where most sites can put up paywalls, since users will just turn to free alternatives. This is debatable, but not my point. If the site had an "opt-in to ads" modal (which set a cookie or something,) would you ever accept?
- Spivak 11y ago
  > since users will just turn to free alternatives If there are completely free alternatives which are an acceptable replacement how are you going to compete in the first place? I would never accept that opt-in for an ever growing list of reasons but I'm also the person who donates to sites I like.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >If the site had an "opt-in to ads" modal (which set a cookie or something,) would you ever accept? No. Maybe I'm jaded from years and years of terrible, manipulative advertising on all forms of media, but no. But that's no reason to require "opt-out".

AdmiralAsshat 11y ago

A webcomic from twelve years ago summarized my feeling on ad tracking: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/19 http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/19 Of course back then we called it "spyware," but apparently now it's the more consumer-friendly "interest-based acquisition and aggregation you tacitly agreed to when you decided to visit our website."

s_kilk 11y ago

Nope, it's all going in a black hole, no exceptions.

JulianMorrison 11y ago

Ethical adblocking is all of them gone forever. I want advertising to cease to exist.

wanderfowl 11y ago
That's one of the problems I have in this debate. "How can we have the best advertising possible?" includes the premise "We should have advertising", which is probably not true, for the very best values of society. It's one way to monetize the world, but not the only way, I hope desperately that I see a day when ad companies are remembered like telegraph companies.

cbd1984 11y ago

Here's an interesting part I'm going to use to illustrate a larger point: > whether those services are free through ads or are entirely paid. It isn't this simple. I pay for a newspaper, I still get ads. The fact the newsstand price is too low for them to give it to me ad-free isn't really up to me; they don't offer an ad-free option, even at a higher price. Magazines are the same way. So are a lot of premium pay TV channels. So's SiriusXM. My point is, I can't trust them to not run ads. Even if I'm paying them directly, they still have the option to shove ads down my eye-holes. I can't effectively block ads anywhere but online, so that's what I do. Everywhere else, regardless of what I pay, I still get ads.

irl_zebra 11y ago

I should be able to choose what I see on my computer, especially when I'm paying for bandwidth. But this has already been said. What I find laughable is the author's warning at the end that essentially boils down to: If you keep blocking ads, the alternative will be much worse, so you better not block ads...or else! "What’s more likely is that web ads are going to get way worse, adblocking is going to go way up, and at some point in this arms race, after the death of many a media company, eventually some will indeed have adapted. The big question is whether you’ll like the alternatives. It can be apps. It can be inside Apple’s Newsstand (featuring unblockable ads). It can be inside Facebooks instant articles. It can be subversive native ads. It can be paywalls. Think in-app purchases: 'Pay $1 for this article, or pay by watching a video.'"

manicdee 11y ago
Unblockable ads, using Apple's Newsstand delivery vehicle? How long will that last before Apple is kicking the content provider's arse to kingdom come?

lostcolony 11y ago

What ads blockers and ad companies should do is work to create an opt in whitelist, that is socially decided upon by the blockers' users. That is, allow an opt in to use a socially decided upon whitelist, along with your personal whitelist. As users allow ads on certain sites, let them also indicate "this ad should be shown to everyone; it's not annoying/it's acceptable enough to allow". If enough users do that, allow it to be shown. If that triggers a large enough backlash amongst users, remove it from the whitelist, and prevent it from being re-added to the whitelist (though individuals can still whitelist it individually). That way, non-obtrusive, background ads can be slowly turned on for those who opt in to allow it. If someone tries to engineer the whitelisting of an ad that people find objectionable, it will be removed by all the people re-blocking it. If a user finds the ads being allowed, in total, are too irritating, they can remove the social whitelist entirely. And those who simply want no ads need not opt in to the whitelist.

sleepychu 11y ago

I'll never forget a conversation I had with one of Amazon's devs about real-time ad bidding. When you load(possibly -ed not sure if this is still the case) a page Google says to it's advertisers "Ok, how much will you pay for an advert to be served to this id" and they had some tiny number of ms to respond based on the data they'd collected about that user. The article author rejects that mass adoption of adblocking will cause the advertising industry to come back with a better deal that doesn't include egregious privacy invasion and that it will in fact just kill small media companies relying on advertising revenue. The two are not mutually exclusive, it's a shame that some companies will inevitably fall through the gap but as others have pointed out this doesn't create a moral obligation to you to accept the current 'deal' ad companies are offering. Don't fall for this crap, mass surveillance by advertisers must die.

imgabe 11y ago

This is not an ethical issue. You don't get to just send whatever information you want to my computer because you paid some underemployed 20-something 50 bucks to slap together a listicle. If publishers want people to look at ads, then provide useful, non-obnoxious ads. I have precisely two sites whitelisted in adblock, Penny Arcade and Reddit. Both are known for screening their ads to be unobtrusive and relevant to their audience.

josefresco 11y ago

Charging for ads based on impressions or views keeps the costs high, the industry inflated and ad people safe in their jobs. If the ads were tied to actions (clicks, sales etc.) the costs would plummet and many ad people would lose their jobs. It's one thing to say "Your ad was viewed 10,000 times" and another to say "Your ad got 100 clicks".