14 ms·

Because that's a totally separate discussion. Blocking ads is about controlling what code runs on my machine, not about trying to obtain content without "paying

• deleted 10y ago
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• Klathmon 10y ago
  But it is an ethics issue. They have a way to pay and get ads 0% of the time, guaranteed. If you really cared about your security, you would both block ads and pay for the subscription to ensure you never get served the code in the first place. And even if that weren't the case, why is it okay to just take what you want without paying just because you don't approve of the security. Often times I don't trust a website with my credit card info, the solution is to not use that website. The solution is to not try to hack in and take what I want without paying... Edit: i've now had threats sent to the email I had listed in my user profile about this. So i'm done talking here.
  • m3rc 10y ago
    You are making very strange false equivalencies the likes of which I haven't heard since those MPAA ads telling me not to download cars... Are you saying that blocking ads on a website is somehow the same thing as hacking the website and taking material?
  • Mithaldu 10y ago
    To repeat: It is not about paying. I do pay for a number of services that do me right (Steam games, Google Play music, Netflix, others) and would pay for services if i could (Youtube Red). Personally i have no stake in pornhub since i don't use it. It's still, and entirely separately from payments, a very important issue. The real context here is: Controlling what my own mechanical device does with the information it receives from other people's machines. Even if the internet had no ads and no tracking code and no malware anywhere whatsoever, there would still be a need for the technology to block and change the way in which my computer handles the things sent to it by other computers before showing them to me. I have a myriad blocks and css modifications and even site additions and other things set up that have absolutely nothing to do with ads, and being able to do that reliably is important.
    • Klathmon 10y ago
      To repeat: It is about paying. If you paid, this would be a non-issue, as you would never be served the ads in the first place. If you are okay with ads instead of paying, this is a non-issue as you would be served the ads anyway.
      • m3rc 10y ago
        Am I supposed to find every single website I might ever visit in the future and preemptively pay for their no-ads plan? How is that the answer? What about sites which don't offer such a plan? And why should people who can't afford to pay, or wish to not have their money benefit someone, be forced to be opened up to security exploits?
        • deleted 10y ago
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        • jamespo 10y ago
          Who are these people being "forced" to use pornhub?
          • m3rc 10y ago
            I don't remembering mentioning forcing people to visit particular sites, I remember talking about telling people they weren't allowed to ever block ads. I also don't remember saying this was unique to pornhub, or mentioning pornhub in any way.
        • tdb7893 10y ago
          "Am I supposed to find every single website I might ever visit in the future and preemptively pay for their no-ads plan? How is that the answer? What about sites which don't offer such a plan?" Honestly this really is the problem and honestly when I first read it I thought you were arguing against ad blockers. Having to have subscriptions is ridiculous, which is why ad supported really is the only currently realistic model for the majority of the internet. Everyone seems to be so concerned with security so instead of reaching for the nuclear option of just not paying people who provide us content why don't we actually think about how to make them safer? What would an ad network have to do to make you allow them through an ad blocker?
  • digler999 10y ago
    What if you allow ads but dont click on them and dont buy their products ? Then you're doubly cheating, because the poor advertiser paid for those ads when you know very well you will not give any business in return. At least with the ads blocked, the advertiser can pay less for the service (ads), which more accurately reflect their true value.
    • Klathmon 10y ago
      But advertising isn't just about clicks, hell it hasn't been about clicks except recently in history. It's about getting your product out there. And to be completely honest, I don't really have an answer why it's okay to do something like look away from ads, but it's not okay to block them. That's just how I feel, and I know that might be hypocritical, but it is what it is.
      • m3rc 10y ago
        That's an incredibly strange viewpoint. Would you get mad at me if we were watching TV and I muted it when a commercial break came on? Would you demand that I watch closely?
        • Klathmon 10y ago
          No, I wouldn't demand anything, and there is nothing wrong with any of that in the slightest to me. But if you setup a program to explicitly skip every commercial break without any interaction from your part, then it would be a problem to me.
          • m3rc 10y ago
            So it's the automation itself that bothers you? If I kept uBlock origin installed but told it to block nothing by default and then went through and manually clicked block on every ad on a new page you'd be okay?
          • kbutler 10y ago
            So as long as you either see the ads, or are inconvenienced by them, it's OK? How about if my friend hits the mute button for me? How about if my friend is an android?
  • curried_haskell 10y ago
    > But it is an ethics issue. Hardly. Taking what you want? Hacking in? What in the world are you talking about? Nobody is hacking into their systems. They are willingly serving up a page to my computer for free. This has absolutely nothing to do with payment. Whether I view the entire page, or only the part of the page I want to see, is none of their business. What scripts I allow to run on my computer, what content I allow to be downloaded to my computer, is also none of their damn business. All of this happens on my own private property. Personal security easily trumps whatever ethics concern you have.
    • hsod 10y ago
      > They are willingly serving up a page to my computer for free. This has absolutely nothing to do with payment. This seems self-servingly reductive. It sure would be convenient for people who don't like paying for content if the Internet was an amoral technical automaton, but in fact there are human people on the other side of that HTTP request. Your your interactions with them are subject to moral and ethical considerations just like any other, even though they are mediated by automatic mechanisms. note: I don't think PH is a particularly sympathetic example since most of the content is probably pirated in the first place, but your argument bumped me.
      • deleted 10y ago
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      • CodeMage 10y ago
        It always amazes me how readily people defend ads on moral and ethical grounds, without ever considering the moral and ethical aspects of dictating how people should consume content. It's always a useful exercise to try to imagine this same business model and same practices on another medium. Every time I do, it freaks me out. Here's what it looks like: I enjoy reading sci-fi and fantasy, but it's getting harder and harder to pick the next thing to read, because I'm getting pickier with age. It would be great if I could find a source of information about new sci-fi and fantasy books, so that I didn't have to pick my books blindly and get disappointed so often. Fortunately, I've discovered a printed magazine being sold at a store a few blocks away from my home. The greatest thing about it is that it's free of charge! I don't have to pay for the magazine, I just have to go to the store and pick up the copy. However, it's peppered with ads. Some are annoying because they're placed in such a way that I don't realize they're ads. Instead, I think I'm reading a book review and I don't realize my mistake until I'm almost a full paragraph into the ad. Others are clearly ads, but they're a whopping four pages and they interrupt my reading flow because I have to skip them. Others are just half a page in size, but the paper for those pages is much, much thicker than normal, which makes turning pages awkward and cumulatively adds to the weight of the magazine -- so much so that some issues weigh close to an old-school telephone book! But hell, it's still a good source of information, so I use it and grumble, until one day one of the other readers gets so fed up, that they lock themselves in their home for a couple of months and invent a machine that can examine the magazine, cut out all the ads from it and assemble what remains into a smaller, nicer-looking magazine. So now I can go to the store, grab a new issue of the magazine, come home, feed the magazine into the ad-cutter and then enjoy reading all the information I wanted without any ad-related annoyance. This works fine for all readers, but not so much for the ads industry. Naturally, something's got to give, so new technologies emerge. The ads industry designs new ads for the magazine to print and these ads have tiny cameras that observe what the reader is doing and tiny wireless components that report what the cameras observed. That way the magazine publisher and the ads industry can know whether I'm actually reading the ads or not. Not only that, they can also know which ads I look at longer, which ones I skip faster, which ones I come back to look at later and they can even know other things about what I do at home, including what other magazines I like to read. Of course, I don't like that at all. It's my home, you know? Maybe during the summer I like to get up and walk to my coffee-maker clad only in an old T-shirt I slept in -- family jewels hanging freely -- and read the new issue of the magazine while sipping my morning coffee, before getting dressed. Only now I feel uncomfortable because there's a fucking camera catching glimpses of my danglies and sending them to some ad executive up there. Or maybe I'm not that gross, but I still object to intrusive shit being forced on me. And then it gets worse: the magazine publisher starts complaining if I use my ad-cutting machine. They don't stop me from reading their magazine -- still free, mind you! -- but they send me passive-aggressive letters whenever I put an issue through the ad-cutter: "Ads pay our printing costs and allow us to pay our authors and editors. We're not charging you for any of this. Won't you reconsider reading our ads?" Since I'm not the only reader and this magazine isn't the only one to use the ads to sustain themselves, things get complicated. Huge discussions erupt about ad-cutting: readers just want to read their stuff without annoyances and creepy surveillance, writers and editors just want to produce content and get paid for doing the stuff they love, publishers just want to retain their readership and keep making money from putting content in their hands, and the ads industry just wants its profits and the rest of us can get fucked, thank you very much. It's clear that there's a problem with ads, though, so different magazines try different solutions. Some band together and spin off ad companies that promises to serve only "nice ads" that aren't annoying or intrusive. Others say "Fuck it, this didn't work, we're charging you from now on." Others get rid of ads and try subsisting on donations and patronage. Some others get rid of ads by forming a group that charges you a monthly submission and distributes that money based on what magazines you get more frequently from the stores. Still others decide to offer premium content that you have to pay for and don't care whether you cut their ads as much. Some even decide to give you a choice by offering a free ad-ridden edition and a paid ad-free edition for each issue. Not to mention those who go the other way and work as hard as they can on injecting their ads into content in such a way that your ad-cutter can't get rid of them easily. How does the story end? I don't know, we're all still trapped in it. But it still boggles my mind whenever someone tells me that I have a moral and ethical obligation to leave the ads intact in the magazine that's in my hands, in my home, just because I got it for free and the publisher expects me to use it in a certain way. To me, it's not me who's at fault for "stealing content" and "getting something for nothing"; it's the publisher and the ads industry who are overstepping their boundaries and crossing several lines, just because they don't want to change their business model. Every time someone berates me for cutting ads from my magazines and telling me I can't eat my cake and have it too, I can't help but wonder why they don't think of the publishing industry and the ads industry in same terms.
  • BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    > But it is an ethics issue.[...]And even if that weren't the case, why is it okay to just take what you want without paying just because you don't approve of the security. You're off track. A server sends your browser what it would like you to display. It's not required to be displayed in any sense. Why is not displaying all of it stealing / not ethical? The way advertising is typically constructed gives all of the power to the client. Not sure why you're getting threats over email for this comment though. I love HN for its comments but sometimes discourse can break down hard for issues people are passionated about.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • godshatter 10y ago
    They offer the content for free, I choose not to show the ads that come with it on my machine. It's not up to me to make sure their business model works.
  • e40 10y ago
    But it is an ethics issue. The other day, on my phone, I used an ad-supported app and I got malware on my phone (5x, latest Android 7.0). I went to the Play page for that app and many other people complained of the same thing. So, it's not just an ethics issue. I chose, when I got this phone, not to root and run software that prevented ads from being shown. I'm wishing I had done that, because my likely course of action will be to reset my phone and spend many hours getting it setup like it was before the malware.
• ksk 10y ago
  Its easier to simply not go to websites that serve you malware via ads and go to websites without the ads and malware.
  • m3rc 10y ago
    No one is talking about specific malicious sites, people are talking about entire ad networks being infected, something that has happened multiple times in the past. When every site gets their ads served from the same central location and that location is compromised, everyone is at risk unless they have strict anti-ad rules implemented.
    • ksk 10y ago
      My point is, if you don't like ads, go to websites without ads. That way you reward websites who have found alternate means of compensation. Its as simple as if you don't like games/songs/media with DRM, buy the non-DRM ones and reward the authors.
      • m3rc 10y ago
        I don't frequent sites with lots of ads, but that doesn't preclude me blocking any and all other ads.
        • ksk 10y ago
          You claimed you were for people getting rewarded for their work, just not by using methods that you don't agree with. If you are truly principled then you would avoid going to websites that have those ads and only go to websites whose revenue model is aligned with your interests.
          • m3rc 10y ago
            I try in all possible situations to only visit sites that I think aren't causing damage to the landscape of the internet but again, that is a separate issue to me choosing to block all ads. When I browse a content aggregator or a friend sends me a link I'm not going to research each site before clicking the link, I'm just going to click the link if I think it will be interesting. And I'm not going to be okay with exposing myself to security vulnerabilities. Browsing the web I have a right to protect myself, and I'm not going to be somehow guilted into removing that protection.
• deleted 10y ago
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• notyourwork 10y ago
  I suspect you are a minority ad block user, most block ads to not see ads. I agree with your sentiment but frankly it comes off with the same amount of credit as I only torrent content I already purchased. I don't dispute what you do and don't pay for or why you block ads.
  • m3rc 10y ago
    I don't understand what you're trying to say. My reasons are irrelevant because you disagree with the outcome?
• serge2k 10y ago
  > Blocking ads is about controlling what code runs on my machine, Blocking ads is about blocking ads because ads are horrendous.