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Why ad blocking is not a moral dilemma

1 points by tshtf 15y ago

CJefferson 15y ago
This seems like a very weak, self-justifying argument. For example, one of the arguments given is: A user not interested in advertising has to "hurt" either of the other two in the relationship. It is clear to me that blocking advertising hurts the website author. At an extreme, if everyone blocked all advertising, then there are a very large number of websites which would run out of money and shut down in a very short amount of time. Clearly they are using the funds generated by advertising to stay afloat.
- dalke 15y ago
  Ad blockers have been around for a long time. Anyone who hasn't factored in their existence into their business model has done poor planning. Companies which depend on high ad view rates to stay in business have a tenuous model. There's also more than one type of advertisement. I don't like the visual ones with lots of movement, designed to attract my eye. If a site starts playing audio I almost invariably shut the window or hit the mute button. I'm more likely to get an ad blocker just to prevent that nuisance. While a text advertisement, like what Google has, has less intrusion. So you can see ad blockers as a vote against certain styles of advertisement, and not against all advertisement. The question then is how to balance the needs of three different people (readers, writers, and advertisers). Finally, there's a bug in Safari on the Mac. If Flash crashes then I have to restart the browser in order to get it working again. I actually use it as a sort of ad blocker; when I want to see something Flash-based I pop over to Firefox and reopen that page. It's even better in that detection scripts think that Flash is present, so don't give me fallback information. Given that advertisements use Flash to display the ads, is it immoral for me to not restart my browser each time Flash crashes, just to see ads?
  - CJefferson 15y ago
    If you like flash ads, or if websites which rely on ads have a dubious business model, or blocking different types of ads, or flash crashing, does not (in my opinion) alter if not ad blocking is a moral issue. Of course, all those issues can be discussed. I personally ad-block, because I have decided it improves my life greatly, and I have decided I don't care about websites which I like which don't offer me an alternative way to support them.

1 points by tshtf 15y ago

This seems like a very weak, self-justifying argument. For example, one of the arguments given is: A user not interested in advertising has to "hurt" either of the other two in the relationship. It is clear to me that blocking advertising hurts the website author. At an extreme, if everyone blocked all advertising, then there are a very large number of websites which would run out of money and shut down in a very short amount of time. Clearly they are using the funds generated by advertising to stay afloat.

dalke 15y ago
Ad blockers have been around for a long time. Anyone who hasn't factored in their existence into their business model has done poor planning. Companies which depend on high ad view rates to stay in business have a tenuous model. There's also more than one type of advertisement. I don't like the visual ones with lots of movement, designed to attract my eye. If a site starts playing audio I almost invariably shut the window or hit the mute button. I'm more likely to get an ad blocker just to prevent that nuisance. While a text advertisement, like what Google has, has less intrusion. So you can see ad blockers as a vote against certain styles of advertisement, and not against all advertisement. The question then is how to balance the needs of three different people (readers, writers, and advertisers). Finally, there's a bug in Safari on the Mac. If Flash crashes then I have to restart the browser in order to get it working again. I actually use it as a sort of ad blocker; when I want to see something Flash-based I pop over to Firefox and reopen that page. It's even better in that detection scripts think that Flash is present, so don't give me fallback information. Given that advertisements use Flash to display the ads, is it immoral for me to not restart my browser each time Flash crashes, just to see ads?
- CJefferson 15y ago
  If you like flash ads, or if websites which rely on ads have a dubious business model, or blocking different types of ads, or flash crashing, does not (in my opinion) alter if not ad blocking is a moral issue. Of course, all those issues can be discussed. I personally ad-block, because I have decided it improves my life greatly, and I have decided I don't care about websites which I like which don't offer me an alternative way to support them.