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I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human civiliz

I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now reached adulthood knowing nothing but that hustle touching every bit of media they ever interact with. Who even knows what they'll do with that. In 2005 or so there was a bunch of trojans going around for IIRC Blizzard games to steal account creds on various sites and my first response to that was "huh, that site has ads?" People give Brave grief over BAT, and maybe with good reason, but it's one the few efforts to try and bring some sort of involvement to the public side of it as to where the money is flowing that seems to have a chance of going anywhere.

nsgi 5y ago
I wonder if part of the problem is that the people who develop websites and put the ads on (developers) are largely also the people who use ad blockers so they don't realise how bad the experience is for regular users
- jmoreno94 5y ago
  Even if they did you think the average person is going to put their neck on the line over ads? How many UX designers just give into client demands, how many devs work extra hours to make up for bad management practices? How many managers are under pressure over sales created deadlines? How many sales people are under pressure over the company's target numbers? There will always be a few people who are willing to put their neck on the line but it'll require a culture shift before any momentum builds up and most feel comfortable protesting these practices at their workplace.
- rtsil 5y ago
  Developers realize how bad the visual experience is, how the tracking scripts, the megapixel images and the huge videos are ruining their perfect pagespeed insights score, slowing down everything, eating the visitor's mobile plan and are an awful waste of energy. But developers don't control what marketing put in their sweet Google Tag Manager container(s).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawayacc2 5y ago
> the ad companies went to war against human civilization Upvotes the moment I read this. Yes. This is what they did and they deserve to be blocked in every way possible for it.
TheIronMark 5y ago
- tpoacher 5y ago
  Insert Cathy Newman "So what you're saying is..." meme.
- reincarnate0x14 5y ago
  Why don't I get paid for my HN posts? Do I owe you for your reply? Do you owe me for this reply? You work out how we commoditize every interaction into tiny micropayments so MBAs are happy with our time allocations and let me know. Ads were tried, and it's been an absolute fucking disaster.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    This is maybe the one thing where Bitcoin or another blockchain-based payment network could have been a net benefit in theory (both as a measure to prevent spam and to reward content creators)... but in practice it turned out to be nothing more than a giant planetary heating system.
    - camgunz 5y ago
      To my surprise, I discovered proof-of-work was originally an anti-spam solution for email! [0] Pretty interesting stuff. [0]: http://www.hashcash.org/ http://www.hashcash.org/
    - lanstin 5y ago
      or any open micropaymemts type platform. I always expected the journalists to make such a thing-pay whatever $50 bucks a month and it is split between the content publishers you visit. Better than a few people like me subscribing to as many papers as i can and most people being the prey of the asveetisers and having terrible roadblocks to just learning the news.
  - TheIronMark 5y ago
    > Why don't I get paid for my HN posts? That's between you and HN and has nothing to do with my consumption of your comment. > Ads were tried, and it's been an absolute fucking disaster. No one likes ads, but expecting free content is silly.
skummetmaelk 5y ago
> It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash This cannot be overstated. Everything today is a battle for eye-balls and ad money. The corruption is insane. You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well. Instead you can buy cheap junk for less than cogs because they make money selling your data to ad companies instead of making money by making products that are actually good. The concept of "value" for consumers has been completely twisted and I am not looking forward to seeing where this race to the bottom will end up.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  >The concept of "value" for consumers has been completely twisted and I am not looking forward to seeing where this race to the bottom will end up. For a lot of consumer tech companies, it's less about providing value to consumers and more about extracting value from them. Between vendor lock-in, privacy violations, and arbitrary one-sided changes in service, it's straight out of an abusive partner's playbook.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    A lot of consumer tech companies' entire business model is "growth and engagement" which is basically arbitrage between what the investors/advertisers will pay and what it costs them to produce this "engagement". Any useful output produced by the system is a mere side-effect and the bare minimum necessary for to get the victims to "engage".
- bambax 5y ago
  The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons, and one of those reasons was that people actually liked ads and wanted them. This line of reasoning has completely disappeared from the mainstream. I think that's a problem for the ad companies. They have not yet lost the war, but it seems they have lost the argument.
  - colordrops 5y ago
ldoughty 5y ago
Me either... When I was younger I felt bad, but I also had no money. Now I get frustrated when I can't give a website I like and want to support a reasonable amount of money... Of course, if they feel their website is worth $120/year and I feel it's worth $10/year, there's a problem, but thats their business decision to say ad-free costs that much regardless of your level of consumption or desire for the content
apricot 5y ago
> I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. The amount of guilt I feel about ad blocking is equal to the amount of guilt advertisers feel about bothering me with their ads.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  That's awesome, never thought about it that way. Completely agree.
- whoibrar 5y ago
  This is the way
  - soco 5y ago
    - codercotton 5y ago
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- xdennis 5y ago
  The tracking is even worse.
m12k 5y ago
The problem I have with BAT is that it tries to give me power over the commercialization of something that I don't want commercialized. It's like someone launched a "Basic Sexual Favor Token" to empower me to take control over the sex work I'm expected to perform every day. I have a hard time being happy that they want to empower me, because I'm too busy being aghast at their assumption that this aspect of my life is for sale in the first place and that I would be ok with that.
- 1shooner 5y ago
  Could you describe the negative consequence of BAT for a website owner that doesn't want to sell ads?
  - danShumway 5y ago
    > for a website owner Not GP, but when I think about the negative consequences of BAT, I'm thinking about the user and society overall, not necessarily the website owner in specific. Monetizing attention is dangerous, and I think we should be a lot more careful about when we do so, as opposed to monetizing attention being the default way we fund everything online. BAT is in many ways less harmful than existing advertising networks, but it's still trying to find a way to ethically commoditize otherwise private attention/focus on what we read/see, and I think that the omnipresent commoditization of that attention/focus across society is harmful regardless of whether or not it's invasive or collects PII and regardless of whether or not users get paid for selling something that we shouldn't encourage them to sell. I think that this has an effect on how humans process the world, I think it has an effect on how much energy we're willing to devote to different tasks. I think it has an effect on attention spans, and on what types of content get made, and the way that we spread memes/culture, and how we interact with each other. I think it has an effect on market efficiency and on what products succeed. I'm not going to oversell modern advertising as some kind of giant monster that's responsible for all problems, but I think its effects are likely more negative than positive at this point and that we can build better systems that don't optimize for keeping people hooked on consuming content endlessly just so we can redirect some of that attention to a product. As a website owner, the social stuff still applies to me, I may not want my stuff commoditized at all. But I also recognize that users have the right to modify code running on their computer, including for the purposes of inserting their own ads, so if it's happening with the user's permission I can't really get mad at the user. In many ways I'm the least impacted person in this situation. However, that doesn't mean that I think Brave's system is good for the user or for society, and I'm not going to encourage people to use it. My feeling is that Brave is trying to reform a system that I would like to see destroyed.
nkrisc 5y ago
Ad blocking these days is actually just a security measure. When sites like nytimes.com serve malware through third party ad networks they’ve put on their page, it’s silly to not use an ad blocker. On sites that handles all their own ad sales and display directly, I still see their ads.
Lammy 5y ago
Isn’t it fun how our years of combined nerd opposition toward surveillance of Internet infrastructure was a total waste of time when all it took was flashing some cash to make advertisers implement even more intrusive client-side surveillance in a distributed infinitely-scalable way instead? Even our response to the Snowden releases was to get Google Analytics running over TLS and to make it even harder for a normal solo person to host a website that isn’t through one of the major silos.
jbverschoor 5y ago
Zero guilts felt. The art of not feeling guilt
dheera 5y ago
No guilt either. It's on them for making the ads so damn annoying with popups, modals, megabytes of JavaScript, interspersed with more subscription and GDPR popups, and shitting cookies all over my browser, and tracking my searches across sites, and sometimes covering up over HALF my screen on mobile. No thanks. If they had stuck with a simple, in-line, hyperlinked image I would have probably not cared, but this is too much. The way the ad is delivered is what is annoying and not the ad itself.
eternalban 5y ago
There should be no guilt and I'm surprised at even the notion as a possibility. If someone pays for a billboard that does not in any way entitle them to my choosing to look away. That's all an ad blocker does: enforce your choice to ignore advertising by not looking.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. I believe this is true about society in general and has gone on since long before 2003. Almost every ill in modern society can be drawn back to some people doing their best to convince other people to buy shit from them. At this point, I think we should make a serious political effort to outright ban advertising and marketing entirely. Whatever the results of that are, I seriously doubt they'd be worse than what we have.
adamc 5y ago
Well said. Periodically, I try to turn ad-blocking off because of my sympathies for various web sites. I always turn it back on. The web is now unusable without ad-blocking, at least for me.
HWR_14 5y ago
> . It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash Indeed. Even with an ad blocker, you have this issue where your momentary attention on the internet (say by visiting a site) is presumed to have value. So anything to get you to click on some shitty link.
thrower123 5y ago
Ad companies gave up any right to not be blocked decades ago when they were serving actively malicious stuff that would backdoor browsers and own earlier versions of Windows. Since then it has been irresponsible to use the internet without a robust ad-blocker.
ar_lan 5y ago
> I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. I don't know why anybody would feel any guilt. When cable was the only thing available, I would switch to my Gameboy when ads would come on and mute the TV, effectively blocking the ads. I'm always curious if people who shame others about ad-blocking similarly think that action was immoral and I should instead be forced to keep my eyes open with superglue when the ads came on. > People give Brave grief over BAT Many people are against crypto-currency with no reason other to be contrarian (or they just really, really, really love JP Morgan/Chase). BAT is not even required to be used to use Brave... I have mixed opinions on where the ad-blocking layer should live (I generally think at the router level), but there are some undeniable benefits to having at least some form at the browser-level as well, and I think Brave making this a default was a fantastic idea.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  Thanks for your kind words. Quick note on router level approach: without MitM and full JS/HTML/CSS runtime, can't block tracking and ads effectively. PiHole etc. are good but not sufficient to stop the latest, and with Google pushing for more AMP borg-ification of sites' content, getting into the 1st party content that unfolds only at TLS termination and JS execution is essential to blocking threats.
krsrhe 5y ago
city41 5y ago
The one that really got me was now fortune cookies have ads on them. If there is a blank surface, eventually it will be replaced with an ad.
disgruntledphd2 5y ago
> There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 1963 but the <tv> companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now reached adulthood knowing nothing but that hustle touching every bit of media they ever interact with. Who even knows what they'll do with that. Fixed that for you ;) Like, I remember growing up absolutely surrounded by advertising. It was on the TV, it was on the radio, it was in newspapers and magazines. Literally every second page in a magazine was ads! It was crazy. I grew up with it (as did many of you). What were the major level societal consequences of this shift? And when did it begin? Was radio just as bad in the 30's? Are newspapers where it went wrong? Man, at that point we may as well go the whole way and blame the industrial revolution ;) More generally, advertising is a consequence of the economic system we've (somewhat) collectively as a species decided we want to achieve our goals. I doubt the first urban dwellers expected the vast new cities to be hives of disease, either, but them's the breaks.
- sjy 5y ago
  > “It is inconceivable,” said Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce, at the first national radio conference in 1922, “that we should allow so great a possibility for service, for news, for entertainment, for education, and for vital commercial purposes to be drowned in advertising chatter.” Hoover’s remarks reflected the accepted wisdom of the times: that advertising on radio was unacceptable … According to a report of the first conference, all agreed that “direct advertising in radio broadcasting service [should] be absolutely prohibited.” Tim Wu, The Master Switch (2011), chapter 5
raflemakt 5y ago
I never used an ad blocker. I think ads are a symptom of our time, and although I understand that not everyone would (or should) follow this idea, I will neither ignore or treat a symptom but rather watch it closely as one should with enemies. Most people on this planet is not using ad blockers so there's an inequality issue, and hiding the effects (ads) of a problem will further stop us from taking systematic action.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Reminds you to keep your anger hot. Better than what I'm going to do, which is block ads with extreme prejudice until the one day when google/apple/mozilla flips the switch and adblockers don't work anymore.
jjkmk 5y ago
100% agreed. In fact I would feel guilty about not adblocking by supporting these types of practices. If a site is responsible I will add them to my white list. How do I know if a site is responsible If I'm blocking you might ask? Well you just know.
bastardoperator 5y ago
Same, I pay for my internet connection and I get to decide which content I see and don't see. They're my resources. If you're going out of business because ad revenue, find a different business model. Nobody likes ads plastered all over the screen, the worst part is many ads are deceptive or as mentioned could lead to other nefarious acts. No thanks...
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"It corrupts everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now civilzation and there's been no going back." Nasty side effects: journalism suffers as "tech" prospers, less well-informed, more polarised society, freedom of the press is threatened (now by "tech" intermediaries, in addition to governments), justice system competes with "cancellation", etc. via "tech" intermediary "platforms" Consider downstream effects of all this on governance Journalism has declined in quality. But "tech" does not provide a solution or even a viable alternative, it is the cause. With journalism, advertising once supported far more unbiased reporting. This was too long ago for many younger folks to remember. People born into a world of "tech" companies happily accept today's lower quality "news"; many even try to profit from it. With "tech", advertising tends to support increased digital surveillance. Not a net gain for humanity.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
YES. Every dark pattern in technology today is caused directly or indirectly by advertising. Privacy violations? Advertising. Bloated and unusable websites? Advertising. Addictive social media? Advertising. Blocking these ads is a moral imperative at this point. I don't feel guilty, I feel proud and I encourage every single person to do it.

nsgi 5y ago

I wonder if part of the problem is that the people who develop websites and put the ads on (developers) are largely also the people who use ad blockers so they don't realise how bad the experience is for regular users

jmoreno94 5y ago
Even if they did you think the average person is going to put their neck on the line over ads? How many UX designers just give into client demands, how many devs work extra hours to make up for bad management practices? How many managers are under pressure over sales created deadlines? How many sales people are under pressure over the company's target numbers? There will always be a few people who are willing to put their neck on the line but it'll require a culture shift before any momentum builds up and most feel comfortable protesting these practices at their workplace.
rtsil 5y ago
Developers realize how bad the visual experience is, how the tracking scripts, the megapixel images and the huge videos are ruining their perfect pagespeed insights score, slowing down everything, eating the visitor's mobile plan and are an awful waste of energy. But developers don't control what marketing put in their sweet Google Tag Manager container(s).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throwawayacc2 5y ago

> the ad companies went to war against human civilization Upvotes the moment I read this. Yes. This is what they did and they deserve to be blocked in every way possible for it.

TheIronMark 5y ago

tpoacher 5y ago
Insert Cathy Newman "So what you're saying is..." meme.
reincarnate0x14 5y ago
Why don't I get paid for my HN posts? Do I owe you for your reply? Do you owe me for this reply? You work out how we commoditize every interaction into tiny micropayments so MBAs are happy with our time allocations and let me know. Ads were tried, and it's been an absolute fucking disaster.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  This is maybe the one thing where Bitcoin or another blockchain-based payment network could have been a net benefit in theory (both as a measure to prevent spam and to reward content creators)... but in practice it turned out to be nothing more than a giant planetary heating system.
  - camgunz 5y ago
    To my surprise, I discovered proof-of-work was originally an anti-spam solution for email! [0] Pretty interesting stuff. [0]: http://www.hashcash.org/ http://www.hashcash.org/
  - lanstin 5y ago
    or any open micropaymemts type platform. I always expected the journalists to make such a thing-pay whatever $50 bucks a month and it is split between the content publishers you visit. Better than a few people like me subscribing to as many papers as i can and most people being the prey of the asveetisers and having terrible roadblocks to just learning the news.
- TheIronMark 5y ago
  > Why don't I get paid for my HN posts? That's between you and HN and has nothing to do with my consumption of your comment. > Ads were tried, and it's been an absolute fucking disaster. No one likes ads, but expecting free content is silly.

skummetmaelk 5y ago

> It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash This cannot be overstated. Everything today is a battle for eye-balls and ad money. The corruption is insane. You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well. Instead you can buy cheap junk for less than cogs because they make money selling your data to ad companies instead of making money by making products that are actually good. The concept of "value" for consumers has been completely twisted and I am not looking forward to seeing where this race to the bottom will end up.

the_snooze 5y ago
>The concept of "value" for consumers has been completely twisted and I am not looking forward to seeing where this race to the bottom will end up. For a lot of consumer tech companies, it's less about providing value to consumers and more about extracting value from them. Between vendor lock-in, privacy violations, and arbitrary one-sided changes in service, it's straight out of an abusive partner's playbook.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  A lot of consumer tech companies' entire business model is "growth and engagement" which is basically arbitrage between what the investors/advertisers will pay and what it costs them to produce this "engagement". Any useful output produced by the system is a mere side-effect and the bare minimum necessary for to get the victims to "engage".
bambax 5y ago
The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons, and one of those reasons was that people actually liked ads and wanted them. This line of reasoning has completely disappeared from the mainstream. I think that's a problem for the ad companies. They have not yet lost the war, but it seems they have lost the argument.
- colordrops 5y ago

ldoughty 5y ago

Me either... When I was younger I felt bad, but I also had no money. Now I get frustrated when I can't give a website I like and want to support a reasonable amount of money... Of course, if they feel their website is worth $120/year and I feel it's worth $10/year, there's a problem, but thats their business decision to say ad-free costs that much regardless of your level of consumption or desire for the content

apricot 5y ago

> I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. The amount of guilt I feel about ad blocking is equal to the amount of guilt advertisers feel about bothering me with their ads.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
That's awesome, never thought about it that way. Completely agree.
whoibrar 5y ago
This is the way
- soco 5y ago
  - codercotton 5y ago
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
xdennis 5y ago
The tracking is even worse.

m12k 5y ago

The problem I have with BAT is that it tries to give me power over the commercialization of something that I don't want commercialized. It's like someone launched a "Basic Sexual Favor Token" to empower me to take control over the sex work I'm expected to perform every day. I have a hard time being happy that they want to empower me, because I'm too busy being aghast at their assumption that this aspect of my life is for sale in the first place and that I would be ok with that.

1shooner 5y ago
Could you describe the negative consequence of BAT for a website owner that doesn't want to sell ads?
- danShumway 5y ago
  > for a website owner Not GP, but when I think about the negative consequences of BAT, I'm thinking about the user and society overall, not necessarily the website owner in specific. Monetizing attention is dangerous, and I think we should be a lot more careful about when we do so, as opposed to monetizing attention being the default way we fund everything online. BAT is in many ways less harmful than existing advertising networks, but it's still trying to find a way to ethically commoditize otherwise private attention/focus on what we read/see, and I think that the omnipresent commoditization of that attention/focus across society is harmful regardless of whether or not it's invasive or collects PII and regardless of whether or not users get paid for selling something that we shouldn't encourage them to sell. I think that this has an effect on how humans process the world, I think it has an effect on how much energy we're willing to devote to different tasks. I think it has an effect on attention spans, and on what types of content get made, and the way that we spread memes/culture, and how we interact with each other. I think it has an effect on market efficiency and on what products succeed. I'm not going to oversell modern advertising as some kind of giant monster that's responsible for all problems, but I think its effects are likely more negative than positive at this point and that we can build better systems that don't optimize for keeping people hooked on consuming content endlessly just so we can redirect some of that attention to a product. As a website owner, the social stuff still applies to me, I may not want my stuff commoditized at all. But I also recognize that users have the right to modify code running on their computer, including for the purposes of inserting their own ads, so if it's happening with the user's permission I can't really get mad at the user. In many ways I'm the least impacted person in this situation. However, that doesn't mean that I think Brave's system is good for the user or for society, and I'm not going to encourage people to use it. My feeling is that Brave is trying to reform a system that I would like to see destroyed.

nkrisc 5y ago

Ad blocking these days is actually just a security measure. When sites like nytimes.com serve malware through third party ad networks they’ve put on their page, it’s silly to not use an ad blocker. On sites that handles all their own ad sales and display directly, I still see their ads.

Lammy 5y ago

Isn’t it fun how our years of combined nerd opposition toward surveillance of Internet infrastructure was a total waste of time when all it took was flashing some cash to make advertisers implement even more intrusive client-side surveillance in a distributed infinitely-scalable way instead? Even our response to the Snowden releases was to get Google Analytics running over TLS and to make it even harder for a normal solo person to host a website that isn’t through one of the major silos.

jbverschoor 5y ago

Zero guilts felt. The art of not feeling guilt

dheera 5y ago

No guilt either. It's on them for making the ads so damn annoying with popups, modals, megabytes of JavaScript, interspersed with more subscription and GDPR popups, and shitting cookies all over my browser, and tracking my searches across sites, and sometimes covering up over HALF my screen on mobile. No thanks. If they had stuck with a simple, in-line, hyperlinked image I would have probably not cared, but this is too much. The way the ad is delivered is what is annoying and not the ad itself.

eternalban 5y ago

There should be no guilt and I'm surprised at even the notion as a possibility. If someone pays for a billboard that does not in any way entitle them to my choosing to look away. That's all an ad blocker does: enforce your choice to ignore advertising by not looking.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

> There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 2003 but the ad companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. I believe this is true about society in general and has gone on since long before 2003. Almost every ill in modern society can be drawn back to some people doing their best to convince other people to buy shit from them. At this point, I think we should make a serious political effort to outright ban advertising and marketing entirely. Whatever the results of that are, I seriously doubt they'd be worse than what we have.

adamc 5y ago

Well said. Periodically, I try to turn ad-blocking off because of my sympathies for various web sites. I always turn it back on. The web is now unusable without ad-blocking, at least for me.

HWR_14 5y ago

> . It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash Indeed. Even with an ad blocker, you have this issue where your momentary attention on the internet (say by visiting a site) is presumed to have value. So anything to get you to click on some shitty link.

thrower123 5y ago

Ad companies gave up any right to not be blocked decades ago when they were serving actively malicious stuff that would backdoor browsers and own earlier versions of Windows. Since then it has been irresponsible to use the internet without a robust ad-blocker.

ar_lan 5y ago

> I feel zero guilt about ad blocking. I don't know why anybody would feel any guilt. When cable was the only thing available, I would switch to my Gameboy when ads would come on and mute the TV, effectively blocking the ads. I'm always curious if people who shame others about ad-blocking similarly think that action was immoral and I should instead be forced to keep my eyes open with superglue when the ads came on. > People give Brave grief over BAT Many people are against crypto-currency with no reason other to be contrarian (or they just really, really, really love JP Morgan/Chase). BAT is not even required to be used to use Brave... I have mixed opinions on where the ad-blocking layer should live (I generally think at the router level), but there are some undeniable benefits to having at least some form at the browser-level as well, and I think Brave making this a default was a fantastic idea.

BrendanEich 5y ago
Thanks for your kind words. Quick note on router level approach: without MitM and full JS/HTML/CSS runtime, can't block tracking and ads effectively. PiHole etc. are good but not sufficient to stop the latest, and with Google pushing for more AMP borg-ification of sites' content, getting into the 1st party content that unfolds only at TLS termination and JS execution is essential to blocking threats.

krsrhe 5y ago

city41 5y ago

The one that really got me was now fortune cookies have ads on them. If there is a blank surface, eventually it will be replaced with an ad.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago

> There was some period of discussion on the subject back in like 1963 but the <tv> companies went to war against human civilization and there's been no going back. It corrupts and twists everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now reached adulthood knowing nothing but that hustle touching every bit of media they ever interact with. Who even knows what they'll do with that. Fixed that for you ;) Like, I remember growing up absolutely surrounded by advertising. It was on the TV, it was on the radio, it was in newspapers and magazines. Literally every second page in a magazine was ads! It was crazy. I grew up with it (as did many of you). What were the major level societal consequences of this shift? And when did it begin? Was radio just as bad in the 30's? Are newspapers where it went wrong? Man, at that point we may as well go the whole way and blame the industrial revolution ;) More generally, advertising is a consequence of the economic system we've (somewhat) collectively as a species decided we want to achieve our goals. I doubt the first urban dwellers expected the vast new cities to be hives of disease, either, but them's the breaks.

sjy 5y ago
> “It is inconceivable,” said Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce, at the first national radio conference in 1922, “that we should allow so great a possibility for service, for news, for entertainment, for education, and for vital commercial purposes to be drowned in advertising chatter.” Hoover’s remarks reflected the accepted wisdom of the times: that advertising on radio was unacceptable … According to a report of the first conference, all agreed that “direct advertising in radio broadcasting service [should] be absolutely prohibited.” Tim Wu, The Master Switch (2011), chapter 5

raflemakt 5y ago

I never used an ad blocker. I think ads are a symptom of our time, and although I understand that not everyone would (or should) follow this idea, I will neither ignore or treat a symptom but rather watch it closely as one should with enemies. Most people on this planet is not using ad blockers so there's an inequality issue, and hiding the effects (ads) of a problem will further stop us from taking systematic action.

pessimizer 5y ago
Reminds you to keep your anger hot. Better than what I'm going to do, which is block ads with extreme prejudice until the one day when google/apple/mozilla flips the switch and adblockers don't work anymore.

jjkmk 5y ago

100% agreed. In fact I would feel guilty about not adblocking by supporting these types of practices. If a site is responsible I will add them to my white list. How do I know if a site is responsible If I'm blocking you might ask? Well you just know.

bastardoperator 5y ago

Same, I pay for my internet connection and I get to decide which content I see and don't see. They're my resources. If you're going out of business because ad revenue, find a different business model. Nobody likes ads plastered all over the screen, the worst part is many ads are deceptive or as mentioned could lead to other nefarious acts. No thanks...

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"It corrupts everything it touches into a constant hustle for eyeball-cash and an entire generation has now civilzation and there's been no going back." Nasty side effects: journalism suffers as "tech" prospers, less well-informed, more polarised society, freedom of the press is threatened (now by "tech" intermediaries, in addition to governments), justice system competes with "cancellation", etc. via "tech" intermediary "platforms" Consider downstream effects of all this on governance Journalism has declined in quality. But "tech" does not provide a solution or even a viable alternative, it is the cause. With journalism, advertising once supported far more unbiased reporting. This was too long ago for many younger folks to remember. People born into a world of "tech" companies happily accept today's lower quality "news"; many even try to profit from it. With "tech", advertising tends to support increased digital surveillance. Not a net gain for humanity.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

YES. Every dark pattern in technology today is caused directly or indirectly by advertising. Privacy violations? Advertising. Bloated and unusable websites? Advertising. Addictive social media? Advertising. Blocking these ads is a moral imperative at this point. I don't feel guilty, I feel proud and I encourage every single person to do it.