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The belief that advertisers are owed my attention is absurd. Since forever, you could opt of viewing ads. Ad in a magazine? Next page. TV commercial? Great tim

The belief that advertisers are owed my attention is absurd. Since forever, you could opt of viewing ads. Ad in a magazine? Next page. TV commercial? Great time for a bathroom break. But now advertisers have decided that you MUST watch their ad. There's a countdown timer for. If the browser loses focus, the timer stops. How long before they're tracking eyeballs for enforcement? Oh wait, not long at all. https://futurism.com/moviepass-eye-tracking-ads https://futurism.com/moviepass-eye-tracking-ads https://www.techspot.com/news/93055-meta-patents-hint-metaverse-advertising-uses-eye-tracking.html https://www.techspot.com/news/93055-meta-patents-hint-metave...

robomartin 5y ago
> The belief that advertisers are owed my attention is absurd. You are trying to rationalize theft through self-righteous nonsense. If you don't want the ads, don't use the site/service/content. Simple as that. Anything else is you stealing it. You don't get to decide how a site pays for the cost of running their operation. They do. If they decide ads is the way and you don't like it, don't use their site. Stealing the content does not make you virtuous, no matter how you might attempt to distort reality. It makes you a thief. "I don't how you do things, so I am going to steal your product!" Yeah, that's a formula for a better society.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  Who's stealing it? I asked for an article through the customary channels and they served it to me. Inside that article, they offered a whole set of embedded resources for me to choose to load, and I opted out of a lot of them. None of that remotely resembles theft.
  - robomartin 5y ago
    You have obviously convinced yourself it is OK to steal because you think it is OK to steal, because you think it is OK to steal. Good for you. What you never see are the jobs you might affect through your actions. You have actually convinced yourself that you are entitled to use someone else's work product without paying for it in any way. All I can say is that I hope one day someone does the same to you. Maybe then you'll understand that theft has consequences. If you don't like advertising, stop stealing the products, services and content it supports.
    - kstrauser 5y ago
      I think we fundamentally disagree on what "stealing" means.
      - robomartin 5y ago
        Correct. You have no idea what it means to respect someone's property and livelihood. Hence a creative interpretation that allows you to take while explicitly blocking their ability to generate revenue.
        commoner 5y ago
        If a site owner publishes content and makes it available free of charge, it is available for visitors to consume free of charge. Your argument shows a lack of respect for the autonomy of internet users, who are not obligated to consume ads just because they are presented alongside other site content, just as TV viewers are not obligated to watch the ads during commercial breaks. Site owners have alternative means of generating revenue (affiliate links, sponsored content, merchandise, donations, etc.) and the option of charging for site content. No site owner is entitled to revenue from advertising.
        robomartin 5y ago
        I don't like ads. Yet I respect the fact that the product supplier needs them to pay the bills. You don't like ads. You have zero respect for the product supplier. You consume their work product and delete the ads, using an artificially-constructed moral high ground to justify it. The web would not exist if your world view had been dominant from the early days. Few people are interested in paying for anything directly. Gmail has 1.5 billion users. Care to guess how many pay for the service? Nobody is going to pay for search, and yet it is one of the most valuable tools on the internet, arguably the one thing that makes it work. A service like YouTube is incredibly valuable, not just from an entertainment perspective but also for learning and more. Once again, nobody wants to pay for it. I could go on. There are millions of excellent sites beyond what Google has to offer. What's more important is that none of these services would have been built to where they are today were it not for the use of advertising as a revenue generation channel. At a higher philosophical level, the question might be: What future valuable service or product would we not allow to germinate if nobody wants to pay for anything and everyone uses ad blockers. Like it or not, this is one of the easiest ways for entrepreneurs to finance their dreams and ideas on the web. Given the vast majority of people will not pay for anything, the options become very few. This is certainly true at inception. Later on, as a business matures, other potential revenue streams surface. Go try and start something like Facebook (about 3 billion users) and ask people to pay you just $1 per year. Aside from the fact that it would be impossible to support the infrastructure and people needed to run such a beast, well, nobody is going to hand you even $1 per year for the service. I don't care what features and privacy enhancements you might offer, nobody is going to pay. What's left? Well, initially, advertising. That's the only way. Sad, but true. We don't have to like reality, but we should understand it.
- discardedrefuse 5y ago
  When there's a law that makes adblocking illegal. I will gladly leave the web behind forever. But to equate adblocking to stealing is hyperbolic nonsense. And to out right call me a thief is insulting. Looks like I struck a nerve; or maybe this whole thread did. Maybe you're in ad tech? I hope you are. I hope you read through this entire thread and soak in just how rotten your industry is; so reviled even here on HN.
  - robomartin 5y ago
    - commoner 5y ago
      It is not the responsibility of Internet users to ensure the jobs of people in the advertising industry. Compelling users to view ads (when they view other content) to protect those jobs would be an infringement on individual rights for a very poor reason. That's why ad blockers and DVRs are legal in every country that I'm aware of.
      - robomartin 5y ago
        So, you think that the only people who's jobs are affected by this theft are those in the advertising industry? I have news for you. Those jobs are not affected at all. Advertising isn't going away, ever. The channels change, but advertising survives. There's plenty pre-internet history on that. The jobs that are affected are those from the sites that rely on ad income to pay for salaries and their costs. If 100% of internet users used ad-blocking millions of jobs would evaporate almost overnight. I'll give you a simple example of this. A good friend of mine runs a nice little site where he and his wife provide valuable and well-researched nutritional information for pet owners. They work very hard to create their content. This site is their sole income. This is what they do to house and feed their kids, to have a life. Nearly 100% of their income is form advertising on their site. If they did not generate this income they would go bankrupt and likely lose everything. Why do people like you think it is OK to steal their work product? I don't get it. How can anyone rationalize that. Once you get down to ground reality, it's theft.

robomartin 5y ago

> The belief that advertisers are owed my attention is absurd. You are trying to rationalize theft through self-righteous nonsense. If you don't want the ads, don't use the site/service/content. Simple as that. Anything else is you stealing it. You don't get to decide how a site pays for the cost of running their operation. They do. If they decide ads is the way and you don't like it, don't use their site. Stealing the content does not make you virtuous, no matter how you might attempt to distort reality. It makes you a thief. "I don't how you do things, so I am going to steal your product!" Yeah, that's a formula for a better society.

kstrauser 5y ago
Who's stealing it? I asked for an article through the customary channels and they served it to me. Inside that article, they offered a whole set of embedded resources for me to choose to load, and I opted out of a lot of them. None of that remotely resembles theft.
- robomartin 5y ago
  You have obviously convinced yourself it is OK to steal because you think it is OK to steal, because you think it is OK to steal. Good for you. What you never see are the jobs you might affect through your actions. You have actually convinced yourself that you are entitled to use someone else's work product without paying for it in any way. All I can say is that I hope one day someone does the same to you. Maybe then you'll understand that theft has consequences. If you don't like advertising, stop stealing the products, services and content it supports.
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I think we fundamentally disagree on what "stealing" means.
    - robomartin 5y ago
      Correct. You have no idea what it means to respect someone's property and livelihood. Hence a creative interpretation that allows you to take while explicitly blocking their ability to generate revenue.
      - commoner 5y ago
        If a site owner publishes content and makes it available free of charge, it is available for visitors to consume free of charge. Your argument shows a lack of respect for the autonomy of internet users, who are not obligated to consume ads just because they are presented alongside other site content, just as TV viewers are not obligated to watch the ads during commercial breaks. Site owners have alternative means of generating revenue (affiliate links, sponsored content, merchandise, donations, etc.) and the option of charging for site content. No site owner is entitled to revenue from advertising.
        robomartin 5y ago
        I don't like ads. Yet I respect the fact that the product supplier needs them to pay the bills. You don't like ads. You have zero respect for the product supplier. You consume their work product and delete the ads, using an artificially-constructed moral high ground to justify it. The web would not exist if your world view had been dominant from the early days. Few people are interested in paying for anything directly. Gmail has 1.5 billion users. Care to guess how many pay for the service? Nobody is going to pay for search, and yet it is one of the most valuable tools on the internet, arguably the one thing that makes it work. A service like YouTube is incredibly valuable, not just from an entertainment perspective but also for learning and more. Once again, nobody wants to pay for it. I could go on. There are millions of excellent sites beyond what Google has to offer. What's more important is that none of these services would have been built to where they are today were it not for the use of advertising as a revenue generation channel. At a higher philosophical level, the question might be: What future valuable service or product would we not allow to germinate if nobody wants to pay for anything and everyone uses ad blockers. Like it or not, this is one of the easiest ways for entrepreneurs to finance their dreams and ideas on the web. Given the vast majority of people will not pay for anything, the options become very few. This is certainly true at inception. Later on, as a business matures, other potential revenue streams surface. Go try and start something like Facebook (about 3 billion users) and ask people to pay you just $1 per year. Aside from the fact that it would be impossible to support the infrastructure and people needed to run such a beast, well, nobody is going to hand you even $1 per year for the service. I don't care what features and privacy enhancements you might offer, nobody is going to pay. What's left? Well, initially, advertising. That's the only way. Sad, but true. We don't have to like reality, but we should understand it.
discardedrefuse 5y ago
When there's a law that makes adblocking illegal. I will gladly leave the web behind forever. But to equate adblocking to stealing is hyperbolic nonsense. And to out right call me a thief is insulting. Looks like I struck a nerve; or maybe this whole thread did. Maybe you're in ad tech? I hope you are. I hope you read through this entire thread and soak in just how rotten your industry is; so reviled even here on HN.
- robomartin 5y ago
  - commoner 5y ago
    It is not the responsibility of Internet users to ensure the jobs of people in the advertising industry. Compelling users to view ads (when they view other content) to protect those jobs would be an infringement on individual rights for a very poor reason. That's why ad blockers and DVRs are legal in every country that I'm aware of.
    - robomartin 5y ago
      So, you think that the only people who's jobs are affected by this theft are those in the advertising industry? I have news for you. Those jobs are not affected at all. Advertising isn't going away, ever. The channels change, but advertising survives. There's plenty pre-internet history on that. The jobs that are affected are those from the sites that rely on ad income to pay for salaries and their costs. If 100% of internet users used ad-blocking millions of jobs would evaporate almost overnight. I'll give you a simple example of this. A good friend of mine runs a nice little site where he and his wife provide valuable and well-researched nutritional information for pet owners. They work very hard to create their content. This site is their sole income. This is what they do to house and feed their kids, to have a life. Nearly 100% of their income is form advertising on their site. If they did not generate this income they would go bankrupt and likely lose everything. Why do people like you think it is OK to steal their work product? I don't get it. How can anyone rationalize that. Once you get down to ground reality, it's theft.