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The problem I have with the anti-advertising crowd is that none of them take their philosophy to the required ethical conclusion: Stop using free ad-supported r

The problem I have with the anti-advertising crowd is that none of them take their philosophy to the required ethical conclusion: Stop using free ad-supported resources. Google and Facebook are easy examples of this. The position would be far more ethically aligned if they unplugged from all ad-supported products and services.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rusk 7y ago
The alternative ethical conclusion is to pay for the services. I would if I could, but a lot of these guys don't offer this because they want a nice broad stroke of people in their data pie. And that's just where these services are being up front. There's a lot of sneaky underhand tracking that goes on without even being aware of it.
djflutt3rshy 7y ago
https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha Just because someone, either by choice or necessity (have you tried to stop using all ad-supported resources? You've practically gotta be a hermit) participates in something they find morally wrong, doesn't cease to make it morally wrong.
- robomartin 7y ago
  The morality, or lack thereof is your perspective and yours only, it is not an absolute fact. What is a fact is that some are perfectly content having others pay for services they use while, at the sane time, trying to weave a fake moral framework with which to justify their actions. Nobody is forcing anyone to use these sites, and you don’t have to.
andygates 7y ago
"Pay for the ad-free version" is pretty common. I don't see that option in these services.
- robomartin 7y ago
  Then don’t use the service. Nobody is forcing you. You want to use a service for free and have other people pay fir it. You can also start paid versions of these services and show them how it’s done. People who don’t want ads are sure to flock to your services.
- Jyaif 7y ago
  https://contributor.google.com https://contributor.google.com
  - robomartin 7y ago
    Brilliant. And, of course, nobody using ad blockers will sign up. They want others to pay while they use the web for free.
  - ionised 7y ago
    That means signing up for a Google account, which means you're being tracked.
jodrellblank 7y ago
Advertising is a pollution on social space. A deliberately attention-grabbing advertisement represents a very real theft from people, and a public space covered in it, even more so. Advertising is designed to exploit inherent human weaknesses and biases, to manipulate behaviour. It's abusive. Seen from this position, Google is an abuser. The required ethical conclusion is not "inconvenience yourself so you can be more respectable", it's far more extreme than that. What about saving other people from it, or activism to ban it completely, like we restrict noise pollution and physical manipulation of strangers? Using ad-supported services and an ad-blocker might be unethical theft, but the anti-advertising position is against-adverts not how to treat Google fairly; it's not about being "ethically aligned".
bunderbunder 7y ago
I'm not exactly presented with that option. If, when clicking on a hyperlink, I were presented with a landing page where I'd be presented a diagram of what the page would look like, in order to inform me that 70% of the initial data mass of the page would be chumbox, and that there'd be a video that expands out of the middle of the article and starts playing automatically as I scroll past, etc etc, then I'd happily rely on that instead of an adblocker. But that's not what happens - instead, I click the link, and the page immediately starts eating up my data budget (which costs me money, yo) and attempting to track me. My best defense here is to use some sort of adblocker. At which point, the equilibrium point seems to be, some sites I don't even necessarily know they're trying to serve ads to me. Other sites give me a little popup saying, "Disable adblock or GTFO," so I politely GTFO. It's less possible to do anything on that front with outdoor advertising; annoying as a lot of it is, I can't very well stop consuming the world itself. TV, radio, stuff like that, that's at least getting easy nowadays.
meowface 7y ago
That's not how I think about it, though. It's not about the principles of a website using ads or issues with advertising companies. I just personally don't want to see them. If I'm using a Google service, I generally see no or almost no ads because I use uBlock Origin, so I'm not bothered at all. And I actually do subscribe to YouTube Premium because there's no decent way to block ads in the mobile apps, as far as I know. I do like Google's services, and I do understand they couldn't exist without ads, so I know there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance there. But for me, if I can block the ads, then I'm not going to complain. The only time I boycott a site is if they lock you out of the site if they detect you're using an ad blocker. (I'm okay with small messages politely suggesting you turn it off if they don't otherwise restrict access to the site. I always ignore them, though.)
- robomartin 7y ago
  It isn’t cognitive dissonance. You are using something others are paying for and don’t wat to be bothered. If you don’t like the add, don’t use the service.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rusk 7y ago

The alternative ethical conclusion is to pay for the services. I would if I could, but a lot of these guys don't offer this because they want a nice broad stroke of people in their data pie. And that's just where these services are being up front. There's a lot of sneaky underhand tracking that goes on without even being aware of it.

djflutt3rshy 7y ago

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha Just because someone, either by choice or necessity (have you tried to stop using all ad-supported resources? You've practically gotta be a hermit) participates in something they find morally wrong, doesn't cease to make it morally wrong.

robomartin 7y ago
The morality, or lack thereof is your perspective and yours only, it is not an absolute fact. What is a fact is that some are perfectly content having others pay for services they use while, at the sane time, trying to weave a fake moral framework with which to justify their actions. Nobody is forcing anyone to use these sites, and you don’t have to.

andygates 7y ago

"Pay for the ad-free version" is pretty common. I don't see that option in these services.

robomartin 7y ago
Then don’t use the service. Nobody is forcing you. You want to use a service for free and have other people pay fir it. You can also start paid versions of these services and show them how it’s done. People who don’t want ads are sure to flock to your services.
Jyaif 7y ago
https://contributor.google.com https://contributor.google.com
- robomartin 7y ago
  Brilliant. And, of course, nobody using ad blockers will sign up. They want others to pay while they use the web for free.
- ionised 7y ago
  That means signing up for a Google account, which means you're being tracked.

jodrellblank 7y ago

Advertising is a pollution on social space. A deliberately attention-grabbing advertisement represents a very real theft from people, and a public space covered in it, even more so. Advertising is designed to exploit inherent human weaknesses and biases, to manipulate behaviour. It's abusive. Seen from this position, Google is an abuser. The required ethical conclusion is not "inconvenience yourself so you can be more respectable", it's far more extreme than that. What about saving other people from it, or activism to ban it completely, like we restrict noise pollution and physical manipulation of strangers? Using ad-supported services and an ad-blocker might be unethical theft, but the anti-advertising position is against-adverts not how to treat Google fairly; it's not about being "ethically aligned".

bunderbunder 7y ago

I'm not exactly presented with that option. If, when clicking on a hyperlink, I were presented with a landing page where I'd be presented a diagram of what the page would look like, in order to inform me that 70% of the initial data mass of the page would be chumbox, and that there'd be a video that expands out of the middle of the article and starts playing automatically as I scroll past, etc etc, then I'd happily rely on that instead of an adblocker. But that's not what happens - instead, I click the link, and the page immediately starts eating up my data budget (which costs me money, yo) and attempting to track me. My best defense here is to use some sort of adblocker. At which point, the equilibrium point seems to be, some sites I don't even necessarily know they're trying to serve ads to me. Other sites give me a little popup saying, "Disable adblock or GTFO," so I politely GTFO. It's less possible to do anything on that front with outdoor advertising; annoying as a lot of it is, I can't very well stop consuming the world itself. TV, radio, stuff like that, that's at least getting easy nowadays.

meowface 7y ago

That's not how I think about it, though. It's not about the principles of a website using ads or issues with advertising companies. I just personally don't want to see them. If I'm using a Google service, I generally see no or almost no ads because I use uBlock Origin, so I'm not bothered at all. And I actually do subscribe to YouTube Premium because there's no decent way to block ads in the mobile apps, as far as I know. I do like Google's services, and I do understand they couldn't exist without ads, so I know there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance there. But for me, if I can block the ads, then I'm not going to complain. The only time I boycott a site is if they lock you out of the site if they detect you're using an ad blocker. (I'm okay with small messages politely suggesting you turn it off if they don't otherwise restrict access to the site. I always ignore them, though.)

robomartin 7y ago
It isn’t cognitive dissonance. You are using something others are paying for and don’t wat to be bothered. If you don’t like the add, don’t use the service.