5 ms·

I unblock ads on sites I find useful, use frequently and want to actively support. If the ads aren't obnoxious, they stay unblocked. Sites wouldn't exist witho

I unblock ads on sites I find useful, use frequently and want to actively support. If the ads aren't obnoxious, they stay unblocked. Sites wouldn't exist without the users, so they should keep in mind user experience when deciding how to monetize.

jamiequint 6y ago
It's a fundamentally selfish viewpoint that you instead of the site you're using should decide how you consume what the site offers, a point of view that would be considered patently outrageous in many other contexts. Many people here confuse such a thing being possible with such a thing being morally justifiable.
- effingwewt 6y ago
  If you are going to attack people for not liking ads maybe throw out a disclaimer about how you make your living?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - goostavos 6y ago
    Wow, this is a weird thread. Who is this guy and why is everyone so mad at him about making his living in ad tech..? Him being in ads doesn't change the validity of the points he's making. Websites have to make money somehow. If you don't pay for a subscription, and don't allow the ads to run, why should you still feel entitled to consume their content? To be super clear: I'm in the ad-blocker camp, but I don't think we can really pretend that it's somehow justified. Ads annoy the bejesus out of me, I'm not willing to pay for a million little one-off subscriptions, there's this lovely back door that gives me all the content with no ads, so, me being of low moral fiber, goes the adblocking route.
    - dheera 6y ago
      > Ads annoy the bejesus out of me Yep and in all honesty it's their resource use (slowing down web pages), sometimes intrusiveness (e.g. modal popups), masquerading as news articles (those Taboola boxes), and cross-site user tracking/data sharing behavior that annoy me more than anything else. If ads were just inline hyperlinked images I'd find them much less annoying, and would probably not bother blocking them if that is all they were.
    - effingwewt 6y ago
      I have no problem with how he makes his living but when i wrote that he hadn't said a peep about it and it colors his arguments quite differently. Now him making money from ads also doesn't give him the right to call someone a selfish asshole for not displaying them. If a website wantsto block me for using an ad blocker that's fine by me, I leave the website no harm no foul. But to act as if it's theft to view a page with adblocker on is just asinine, and he also did just that. As others have said it's not just the ads, its the invasive tracking, resource hogging, auto playing videos et al. Ads have had their chance and pissed enough of us off that we said enough is enough. We did not agree to be served an ad you jjst present it to us upon landing on your site. Ask away so we can deny but let's not for one second pretend any of us owe you our attention or our cpu just because we clicked some random link.
    - account42 6y ago
      > Websites have to make money somehow. I have a website. It doesn't make money, yet it continues to exist. Weird, I know. Does Hacker News make money?
- TheNorthman 6y ago
  It really can't surprise you that a common viewpoint on HN is that `Information wants to be free'. This is both in a descriptive sense and a normative sense. The descriptive sense obviously can't be selfish but the normative one can. So the question is then as follows: are the activists who further this narrative, out of a normative belief, selfish? I personally don't think so. I believe that people like Aaron Swartz are among the most selfless people to ever exist.
  - jamiequint 6y ago
    I think that's a fair point, the motivations may not be selfish, but that's the expression. Maybe a better characterization of the motivations would be "naive". Nothing is free.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  > It's a fundamentally selfish viewpoint that you instead of the site you're using should decide how you consume what the site offers Properly pay wall it. The site does have control that it doesn't want to exercise. Why does it want to have control over your device to display what it wants. Your content has left your property to land on mine. I can choose what kind of content I let in and not. I don't have to store your ads and tracking cookies. Private platforms like reddit won't host all the content I send to them why should I be obliged to.
- unionpivo 6y ago
  No offense, but to some of us whole promise of internet is to empower users. I would be perfectly willing to let all the sites that can't survive without ads die. Internet would be smaller but still enormously powerful tool. And most of the problem people complain about web and internet today (fake news, social bubbles, , ...) came out of ad tech and its desire to optimize for engagement and tracking. We cant put genie back into the bottle but I can use ad blockers to at least mitigate some small amount of damage.
- Ajedi32 6y ago
  > It's a fundamentally selfish viewpoint that you instead of the site you're using should decide how you consume what the site offers, a point of view that would be considered patently outrageous in many other contexts. I'd argue the opposite. It's fundamentally selfish for a site to assume that _it_ gets to decide, without my agreement or consent, how I must consume the content it has freely and unconditionally sent me. If a site wants to negotiate a fair payment in exchange for its content (whether that payment be currency or merely displaying ads on my screen) it is free to do so, but without a mutual agreement neither party is under any moral obligation to the other. I'm not obligated to view the site in any particular way, and they're not obligated to serve me the content.
  - jamiequint 6y ago
    So for sites where you have agreed to the ToS you agree that it’s fine for them to have that expectation? (e.g. Reddit, Facebook, etc)
    - Ajedi32 6y ago
      Maybe? I don't really consider "by using this site you agree to such and such" to be consent, and I don't know of any sites that ban ad blockers in their ToS. But in a theoretical situation where a site made you explicitly agree not to block ads before allowing you to use the site, then yeah I think it would be reasonable for them to expect you to adhere to that agreement.

jamiequint 6y ago

It's a fundamentally selfish viewpoint that you instead of the site you're using should decide how you consume what the site offers, a point of view that would be considered patently outrageous in many other contexts. Many people here confuse such a thing being possible with such a thing being morally justifiable.

effingwewt 6y ago
If you are going to attack people for not liking ads maybe throw out a disclaimer about how you make your living?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- goostavos 6y ago
  Wow, this is a weird thread. Who is this guy and why is everyone so mad at him about making his living in ad tech..? Him being in ads doesn't change the validity of the points he's making. Websites have to make money somehow. If you don't pay for a subscription, and don't allow the ads to run, why should you still feel entitled to consume their content? To be super clear: I'm in the ad-blocker camp, but I don't think we can really pretend that it's somehow justified. Ads annoy the bejesus out of me, I'm not willing to pay for a million little one-off subscriptions, there's this lovely back door that gives me all the content with no ads, so, me being of low moral fiber, goes the adblocking route.
  - dheera 6y ago
    > Ads annoy the bejesus out of me Yep and in all honesty it's their resource use (slowing down web pages), sometimes intrusiveness (e.g. modal popups), masquerading as news articles (those Taboola boxes), and cross-site user tracking/data sharing behavior that annoy me more than anything else. If ads were just inline hyperlinked images I'd find them much less annoying, and would probably not bother blocking them if that is all they were.
  - effingwewt 6y ago
    I have no problem with how he makes his living but when i wrote that he hadn't said a peep about it and it colors his arguments quite differently. Now him making money from ads also doesn't give him the right to call someone a selfish asshole for not displaying them. If a website wantsto block me for using an ad blocker that's fine by me, I leave the website no harm no foul. But to act as if it's theft to view a page with adblocker on is just asinine, and he also did just that. As others have said it's not just the ads, its the invasive tracking, resource hogging, auto playing videos et al. Ads have had their chance and pissed enough of us off that we said enough is enough. We did not agree to be served an ad you jjst present it to us upon landing on your site. Ask away so we can deny but let's not for one second pretend any of us owe you our attention or our cpu just because we clicked some random link.
  - account42 6y ago
    > Websites have to make money somehow. I have a website. It doesn't make money, yet it continues to exist. Weird, I know. Does Hacker News make money?
TheNorthman 6y ago
It really can't surprise you that a common viewpoint on HN is that `Information wants to be free'. This is both in a descriptive sense and a normative sense. The descriptive sense obviously can't be selfish but the normative one can. So the question is then as follows: are the activists who further this narrative, out of a normative belief, selfish? I personally don't think so. I believe that people like Aaron Swartz are among the most selfless people to ever exist.
- jamiequint 6y ago
  I think that's a fair point, the motivations may not be selfish, but that's the expression. Maybe a better characterization of the motivations would be "naive". Nothing is free.
searchableguy 6y ago
> It's a fundamentally selfish viewpoint that you instead of the site you're using should decide how you consume what the site offers Properly pay wall it. The site does have control that it doesn't want to exercise. Why does it want to have control over your device to display what it wants. Your content has left your property to land on mine. I can choose what kind of content I let in and not. I don't have to store your ads and tracking cookies. Private platforms like reddit won't host all the content I send to them why should I be obliged to.
unionpivo 6y ago
No offense, but to some of us whole promise of internet is to empower users. I would be perfectly willing to let all the sites that can't survive without ads die. Internet would be smaller but still enormously powerful tool. And most of the problem people complain about web and internet today (fake news, social bubbles, , ...) came out of ad tech and its desire to optimize for engagement and tracking. We cant put genie back into the bottle but I can use ad blockers to at least mitigate some small amount of damage.
Ajedi32 6y ago
> It's a fundamentally selfish viewpoint that you instead of the site you're using should decide how you consume what the site offers, a point of view that would be considered patently outrageous in many other contexts. I'd argue the opposite. It's fundamentally selfish for a site to assume that _it_ gets to decide, without my agreement or consent, how I must consume the content it has freely and unconditionally sent me. If a site wants to negotiate a fair payment in exchange for its content (whether that payment be currency or merely displaying ads on my screen) it is free to do so, but without a mutual agreement neither party is under any moral obligation to the other. I'm not obligated to view the site in any particular way, and they're not obligated to serve me the content.
- jamiequint 6y ago
  So for sites where you have agreed to the ToS you agree that it’s fine for them to have that expectation? (e.g. Reddit, Facebook, etc)
  - Ajedi32 6y ago
    Maybe? I don't really consider "by using this site you agree to such and such" to be consent, and I don't know of any sites that ban ad blockers in their ToS. But in a theoretical situation where a site made you explicitly agree not to block ads before allowing you to use the site, then yeah I think it would be reasonable for them to expect you to adhere to that agreement.