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To me, there is no such thing as an “ethical ad”. You are trying to steal my attention, my time. You don’t get to do that. My time on Earth is limited and you d

To me, there is no such thing as an “ethical ad”. You are trying to steal my attention, my time. You don’t get to do that. My time on Earth is limited and you don’t get a millisecond of it if I can help it. If I want to buy something, I seek it out. Anything else is a waste of my time and a waste of the advertisers money. I long ago decided to throw out every piece of physical ad mail I receive without even glancing at it more than long enough to recognize it as an advertisement. I don’t know why you expect me to treat your digital ads any differently? You can call my perspective extremist, but is it any more extreme than the methods used by advertising networks to steal my attention?

silentsea90 6y ago
Great morally charged argument, but I am not sure how you expect content creators to monetize.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  That's not really my problem, is it? It is the content creator's problem.
- beefield 6y ago
  Well, to be blunt, in my humble opinion more than 90% of "content creators" trying to monetize their content with ads currently produce content of so low quality, that world would be a better place without their content. So if my ad blocker helps any of those to change their career, I am happy.
  - silentsea90 6y ago
    Even with ad monetization, if their content is of no use, they will disappear if they survive on said ad monetization. Content creation on the web is hard enough to suffer from removing the major monetization avenue without a suitable alternative.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  Charge money, either directly for the content, or indirectly in the form of patronage or a service or other business you run.
  - silentsea90 6y ago
    Yep, these exist as alternatives as of now, but require an explicit payment step which might cause more friction than ads. I think a service that allows for website usage based payments, a Spotify/Apple News for websites would be interesting. I can see a decentralized crypto application evolving around this usecase
    - JoshTriplett 6y ago
      > Yep, these exist as alternatives as of now, but require an explicit payment step which might cause more friction than ads. Payment from one user produces more revenue than showing ads to hundreds of users. That should be multiplied in to any analysis of friction. > I think a service that allows for website usage based payments, a Spotify/Apple News for websites would be interesting. There have been many attempts to do that, none of which have succeeded. One major problem: they tend to track all your web activity, and the kinds of people interested in services like this are very much the kinds of people who don't want to be tracked. Another problem: it's easier to convince people to pay for a specific source of content than to amorphously pay for "various content".
ogre_codes 6y ago
I'm pretty frustrated by advertising too, and some of it is particularly egregious, but at the moment, there is really no other way for many publishers to get paid. I'm curious, how many services do you subscribe to and pay for content? I pay for a few ad free resources, but certainly a lot of the sites I enjoy don't get my $$.
- Griffinsauce 6y ago
  Just as an example: I read some dev newsletters, they include a block of paid-for job postings. Highly relevant with the content. Together with the occasional sponsored post link (also still relevant content) this appears to fund them just fine. This isn't "ad free" but it's close enough in my opinion. There's a huge gulf between contextually relevant content curated by the creators and the kind of shite that ad networks push.
- monopoledance 6y ago
  Because publishers are producing print content for a past era digitally, or, worse, already feed its bastard adapted to advertisement. I get netflix for about 10€/month, but a weekly print newspaper (still filled with ads...) wants 30€/month (4 issues...) here, where a lesser digital only costs still 10€/month... They just don't serve the information I would pay for, but that doesn't mean the clickbaity "free" online "content" is a legit business model. I want sober, on point, timely information on matters of shared/common interest, filtered by journalistic overview, contextualization and reliable sourcing. With the option to subscribe to niche content additions, e.g. art, culture, but of course news shouldn't be a comfort zone only, either. I don't want to co-pay for the clear special interests like the sports/soccer or housing section, at all. And I won't ever pay for opinionated outrage and intellectual masturbation, because nothing else happened or feels like anything at the moment. I don't want some mind-numbing four page zeitgeist piece on cancel culture which starts by making associative yak shaving a storytelling virtue. I want to be briefed in the morning, by my personal intelligence service, like madame president. Publishers are not struggling, they are throwing a fit over a changing information access reality, for 15 years or something. If they cry just a bit longer now, their economic niche is gonna be completely absorbed by technological answers to the question of "What's going on?".

silentsea90 6y ago

Great morally charged argument, but I am not sure how you expect content creators to monetize.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
That's not really my problem, is it? It is the content creator's problem.
beefield 6y ago
Well, to be blunt, in my humble opinion more than 90% of "content creators" trying to monetize their content with ads currently produce content of so low quality, that world would be a better place without their content. So if my ad blocker helps any of those to change their career, I am happy.
- silentsea90 6y ago
  Even with ad monetization, if their content is of no use, they will disappear if they survive on said ad monetization. Content creation on the web is hard enough to suffer from removing the major monetization avenue without a suitable alternative.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
Charge money, either directly for the content, or indirectly in the form of patronage or a service or other business you run.
- silentsea90 6y ago
  Yep, these exist as alternatives as of now, but require an explicit payment step which might cause more friction than ads. I think a service that allows for website usage based payments, a Spotify/Apple News for websites would be interesting. I can see a decentralized crypto application evolving around this usecase
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > Yep, these exist as alternatives as of now, but require an explicit payment step which might cause more friction than ads. Payment from one user produces more revenue than showing ads to hundreds of users. That should be multiplied in to any analysis of friction. > I think a service that allows for website usage based payments, a Spotify/Apple News for websites would be interesting. There have been many attempts to do that, none of which have succeeded. One major problem: they tend to track all your web activity, and the kinds of people interested in services like this are very much the kinds of people who don't want to be tracked. Another problem: it's easier to convince people to pay for a specific source of content than to amorphously pay for "various content".

ogre_codes 6y ago

I'm pretty frustrated by advertising too, and some of it is particularly egregious, but at the moment, there is really no other way for many publishers to get paid. I'm curious, how many services do you subscribe to and pay for content? I pay for a few ad free resources, but certainly a lot of the sites I enjoy don't get my $$.

Griffinsauce 6y ago
Just as an example: I read some dev newsletters, they include a block of paid-for job postings. Highly relevant with the content. Together with the occasional sponsored post link (also still relevant content) this appears to fund them just fine. This isn't "ad free" but it's close enough in my opinion. There's a huge gulf between contextually relevant content curated by the creators and the kind of shite that ad networks push.
monopoledance 6y ago
Because publishers are producing print content for a past era digitally, or, worse, already feed its bastard adapted to advertisement. I get netflix for about 10€/month, but a weekly print newspaper (still filled with ads...) wants 30€/month (4 issues...) here, where a lesser digital only costs still 10€/month... They just don't serve the information I would pay for, but that doesn't mean the clickbaity "free" online "content" is a legit business model. I want sober, on point, timely information on matters of shared/common interest, filtered by journalistic overview, contextualization and reliable sourcing. With the option to subscribe to niche content additions, e.g. art, culture, but of course news shouldn't be a comfort zone only, either. I don't want to co-pay for the clear special interests like the sports/soccer or housing section, at all. And I won't ever pay for opinionated outrage and intellectual masturbation, because nothing else happened or feels like anything at the moment. I don't want some mind-numbing four page zeitgeist piece on cancel culture which starts by making associative yak shaving a storytelling virtue. I want to be briefed in the morning, by my personal intelligence service, like madame president. Publishers are not struggling, they are throwing a fit over a changing information access reality, for 15 years or something. If they cry just a bit longer now, their economic niche is gonna be completely absorbed by technological answers to the question of "What's going on?".