6 ms·

I find the idea that anyone, a single person, could consider blocking ads to be wrong to be hilarious. I've never met such a person. I can only imagine them to

by throwaway22032 4y ago

I find the idea that anyone, a single person, could consider blocking ads to be wrong to be hilarious. I've never met such a person. I can only imagine them to be barely human. What other bizarre opinions, internal or external, would they have? I don't think that I could trust them with literally anything.

jefftk 4y ago
I think running an ad blocker is freeloading, the same as using paywall-bypassing software. There are worse things people regularly do, but I do think it's minorly wrong and I don't run an ad blocker. I would be fine with ad blockers that only blocked ads, as long as publishers could chose to refuse service to users running ad blockers or ask them to turn their ad blocker off. But uBlock Origin etc don't just block ads, they also pretend to the site that the ads aren't blocked. (I used to work in ads)
- krageon 4y ago
  > I used to work in ads The fact that you admit to working in an industry that actively tries to take as much agency away from others as it can without (apparently) feeling bad about it is really terrible.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    I don't think advertising is harmful in general, and I think an ad-funded web is likely much better than a paywall-funded web. More: https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads
    - mojzu 4y ago
      In theory, ads are great, I'd like to hear about products and services that can solve problems or improve my quality of life. In practice, my experience of ads on the web is to degrade the user experience of the page I came to see and to build intrusive personal profiles on what my interests are believed to be (which often seems to result in being repeatedly fed the same ads for products I've already purchased) Anecdotally the best advertising I have engaged with and bought the most as a result of is content based, not personalised for me in any way (i.e. podcasts before dynamic ads became a thing)
      - geoduck14 4y ago
        >Anecdotally the best advertising I have engaged with and bought the most as a result of is content based, not personalised for me in any way I'm curious what you bought and how you interact with ads. For me, I bought a house. I worked closely with a realtor to find my house. That experience was highly personalized.
        mojzu 4y ago
        Some general examples for me would be: - Watching a board game video, here are ways to buy the game/expansions/similar games - Listening to a book review, here are ways to buy the book/other books by the author/art related to the book - Listening to a tech podcast, here are tech related services that may have been discussed I'm sure it's different for many people and perhaps personalisation helps in many cases, but for me the context of what I'm doing/looking at is most important, causing a context switch/distraction from what I'm trying to do is more likely to be irritating
- muttled 4y ago
  I think my biggest issue with paywalls is that I wouldn't mind it if they showed the search engine only what the viewer can see as well. Then the search engines can try to prioritize the content that the user actually wants to see. As it is now, though, sites will often show the search engine different content than what's revealed to the user. Which is against the terms and conditions of most search engines (known as "cloaking"). Many of the paywall-bypassing software just let the user see what they freely serve up to the search engines. It wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't know how much effort was put into not only serving different content to the spider, but also how much effort is put into trying to make sure the search engine doesn't detect that they're doing it.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    Sites are usually quite careful about this because they don't want to get banned. Google's rules, for example, are quite complex, allowing the search engine to get the full content of every article but with users seeing a small number of free articles and then a paywall after that: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/appearance/flexible-sampling https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/appearanc... It sounds like your proposed change would have the search engine use its influence to push sites away from paywall models?
- throwawayacc2 4y ago
  Let’s say there’s a hamburger restaurant. Now, this hamburger restaurant has an interesting business model. They way it works is, they give out burgers for free. They do that because they get money from lettuce producers to put lettuce in their burgers. It’s a pretty good model right? People get free burgers and lettuce producers get their lettuce in the peoples mouths. I personally don’t like lettuce. I removed it from my burgers. Am I not allowed to remove lettuce from my burger? Am I forced to consume lettuce? And before you tell me to look for another burger place, let me remind you there’s no other burger place. All burger places have this business model. All burger places give burgers for free sponsored by Big Lettuce. So let me ask you again. Am I not allowed to remove lettuce from my own God damned burger?
  - jefftk 4y ago
    This is a pretty weird analogy, because I don't see what the lettuce producers are getting out of it. But ok, let's say that the government is strongly in favor of people eating more vegetables, and richly compensates lettuce producers for each leaf of their lettuce is eaten. The deal the burger producers have with the lettuce producers includes putting cameras in the restaurants, so money only changes hands when people actually do eat the lettuce. The government audits these logs, to ensure their subsidy is being spent effectively. Then yes: in this contrived analogy by taking the burger but not eating the lettuce you're freeloading. The more people that do this, the less likely the restaurant is to continue being able to provide free food to anyone that wants it. And I think it would be pretty reasonable for them to have signs like "patrons who do not eat their vegetables will be asked to leave" and "strictly no takeout". The part of your analogy where you say people who want burgers don't have any other choice seems not to fit: you can eat other foods which don't have this requirement, just like there are lots of places on the internet where you can exchange money for ad-free content.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
      I suspect there's issue with the term "freeloading". It doesn't really make sense for someone to make a business model where they give me something for free and then say I'm freeloading when I take the free thing and don't provide something (attention, time, whatever you want to call it) in return. There wasn't really an agreement (implications do not make an agreement) where I will give some amount of my attention for the free thing and, in fact, the free thing was nominally offered to me as free. The decision to publicly provide the content for "free" with advertisements was made without my input and coordinated without my help. The worst thing my ad blocker does is expose the difficulty with executing that business model.
- Seirdy 4y ago
  First off, some of your comments have referred to ad-blocking being wrong due to conflict with existing business models. Businesses are not entitled to the success of their business models. If a business model fails due to consumer behavior, the business was in the wrong for expecting different behavior. > I would be fine with ad blockers that only blocked ads, as long as publishers could chose to refuse service to users running ad blockers or ask them to turn their ad blocker off. Distracting content (most ads), color schemes with bad contrast, bright images on dark pages, etc. are accessibility hazards (particularly cognitive accessibility hazards). Restricting the use of page-alteration software (e.g. color and font alteration, disabling images, and blocking frames) is therefore a discriminatory practice. In a sibling subthread: > The part of your analogy where you say people who want burgers don't have any other choice seems not to fit: you can eat other foods which don't have this requirement, just like there are lots of places on the internet where you can exchange money for ad-free content. The default behavior on the Web is one in which user-agents set their terms, and websites must agree to them: https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/08/12/user-agents-set-the-terms/ https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/08/12/user-agents-set-the-term... The libertarian perspective is a two-way street. Nobody is forcing a person to publish content on the Web. If the "comply with the user's wishes" model of the Web is problematic to a content creator, they don't need to participate in the Web. POSSE (Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) note from https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/09/10/in-defense-of-content-blocking/ https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/09/10/in-defense-of-content-bl...
krageon 4y ago
> What other bizarre opinions, internal or external, would they have? From experience: When your government spies on you and locks folks up without due process, this is good because it keeps the children safe. And a host of other convictions that are so toxic I cannot say them online without feeling dirty. These are the kind of people that say "think of the children" without irony, that view the world in purely adversarial terms and do their best to hate as many things as they can. They live to make everyone around them miserable. I have seen this repeatedly and only from this kind of person. I am glad I don't have them around me anymore, but sad that other people might. > I don't think that I could trust them with literally anything. It being the case that these are the purest of bad faith actors, you can at least trust them to ruin whatever they touch. It's something :)
- jefftk 4y ago
  > When your government spies on you and locks folks up without due process, this is good because it keeps the children safe. And a host of other convictions that are so toxic I cannot say them online without feeling dirty. These are the kind of people that say "think of the children" without irony, that view the world in purely adversarial terms and do their best to hate as many things as they can. They live to make everyone around them miserable. FWIW, I am against dragnet surveillance, in favor of due process, doubt I've ever said "think of the children" without irony, don't view the world in adversarial terms, enjoy looking for the positive aspects of things other people malign, and don't want anyone to be miserable.
colejohnson66 4y ago
> I've never met such a person. I can only imagine them to be barely human. Well that’s why. When you refuse to even listen/consider their argument, no one is going to argue with you. In addition, saying such a thing here gets you downvoted to oblivion. Doesn’t stop people from doing it; Just look at some of the other comments here.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
noelsusman 4y ago
To be blunt, this comes across as incredibly small minded. Barely human? Really? It's not difficult to imagine an argument against ad blockers. Ads pay for the content you consume on the Internet. If you don't like the ads, then your recourse is to leave the site and go elsewhere. You're not entitled to just block the ads and consume the content for free. I don't personally subscribe to that theory, but I wouldn't describe it as an insane opinion to have.
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  I get my friend to cut the ads out of a newspaper I bought. Maybe I make a machine to do it. Now I read it. This is somehow immoral. Cutting paper I have in my possession. Nah, that's insane, sorry. It speaks to a lack of logical thought processes.

jefftk 4y ago

I think running an ad blocker is freeloading, the same as using paywall-bypassing software. There are worse things people regularly do, but I do think it's minorly wrong and I don't run an ad blocker. I would be fine with ad blockers that only blocked ads, as long as publishers could chose to refuse service to users running ad blockers or ask them to turn their ad blocker off. But uBlock Origin etc don't just block ads, they also pretend to the site that the ads aren't blocked. (I used to work in ads)

krageon 4y ago
> I used to work in ads The fact that you admit to working in an industry that actively tries to take as much agency away from others as it can without (apparently) feeling bad about it is really terrible.
- jefftk 4y ago
  I don't think advertising is harmful in general, and I think an ad-funded web is likely much better than a paywall-funded web. More: https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads
  - mojzu 4y ago
    In theory, ads are great, I'd like to hear about products and services that can solve problems or improve my quality of life. In practice, my experience of ads on the web is to degrade the user experience of the page I came to see and to build intrusive personal profiles on what my interests are believed to be (which often seems to result in being repeatedly fed the same ads for products I've already purchased) Anecdotally the best advertising I have engaged with and bought the most as a result of is content based, not personalised for me in any way (i.e. podcasts before dynamic ads became a thing)
    - geoduck14 4y ago
      >Anecdotally the best advertising I have engaged with and bought the most as a result of is content based, not personalised for me in any way I'm curious what you bought and how you interact with ads. For me, I bought a house. I worked closely with a realtor to find my house. That experience was highly personalized.
      - mojzu 4y ago
        Some general examples for me would be: - Watching a board game video, here are ways to buy the game/expansions/similar games - Listening to a book review, here are ways to buy the book/other books by the author/art related to the book - Listening to a tech podcast, here are tech related services that may have been discussed I'm sure it's different for many people and perhaps personalisation helps in many cases, but for me the context of what I'm doing/looking at is most important, causing a context switch/distraction from what I'm trying to do is more likely to be irritating
muttled 4y ago
I think my biggest issue with paywalls is that I wouldn't mind it if they showed the search engine only what the viewer can see as well. Then the search engines can try to prioritize the content that the user actually wants to see. As it is now, though, sites will often show the search engine different content than what's revealed to the user. Which is against the terms and conditions of most search engines (known as "cloaking"). Many of the paywall-bypassing software just let the user see what they freely serve up to the search engines. It wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't know how much effort was put into not only serving different content to the spider, but also how much effort is put into trying to make sure the search engine doesn't detect that they're doing it.
- jefftk 4y ago
  Sites are usually quite careful about this because they don't want to get banned. Google's rules, for example, are quite complex, allowing the search engine to get the full content of every article but with users seeing a small number of free articles and then a paywall after that: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/appearance/flexible-sampling https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/appearanc... It sounds like your proposed change would have the search engine use its influence to push sites away from paywall models?
throwawayacc2 4y ago
Let’s say there’s a hamburger restaurant. Now, this hamburger restaurant has an interesting business model. They way it works is, they give out burgers for free. They do that because they get money from lettuce producers to put lettuce in their burgers. It’s a pretty good model right? People get free burgers and lettuce producers get their lettuce in the peoples mouths. I personally don’t like lettuce. I removed it from my burgers. Am I not allowed to remove lettuce from my burger? Am I forced to consume lettuce? And before you tell me to look for another burger place, let me remind you there’s no other burger place. All burger places have this business model. All burger places give burgers for free sponsored by Big Lettuce. So let me ask you again. Am I not allowed to remove lettuce from my own God damned burger?
- jefftk 4y ago
  This is a pretty weird analogy, because I don't see what the lettuce producers are getting out of it. But ok, let's say that the government is strongly in favor of people eating more vegetables, and richly compensates lettuce producers for each leaf of their lettuce is eaten. The deal the burger producers have with the lettuce producers includes putting cameras in the restaurants, so money only changes hands when people actually do eat the lettuce. The government audits these logs, to ensure their subsidy is being spent effectively. Then yes: in this contrived analogy by taking the burger but not eating the lettuce you're freeloading. The more people that do this, the less likely the restaurant is to continue being able to provide free food to anyone that wants it. And I think it would be pretty reasonable for them to have signs like "patrons who do not eat their vegetables will be asked to leave" and "strictly no takeout". The part of your analogy where you say people who want burgers don't have any other choice seems not to fit: you can eat other foods which don't have this requirement, just like there are lots of places on the internet where you can exchange money for ad-free content.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
    I suspect there's issue with the term "freeloading". It doesn't really make sense for someone to make a business model where they give me something for free and then say I'm freeloading when I take the free thing and don't provide something (attention, time, whatever you want to call it) in return. There wasn't really an agreement (implications do not make an agreement) where I will give some amount of my attention for the free thing and, in fact, the free thing was nominally offered to me as free. The decision to publicly provide the content for "free" with advertisements was made without my input and coordinated without my help. The worst thing my ad blocker does is expose the difficulty with executing that business model.
Seirdy 4y ago
First off, some of your comments have referred to ad-blocking being wrong due to conflict with existing business models. Businesses are not entitled to the success of their business models. If a business model fails due to consumer behavior, the business was in the wrong for expecting different behavior. > I would be fine with ad blockers that only blocked ads, as long as publishers could chose to refuse service to users running ad blockers or ask them to turn their ad blocker off. Distracting content (most ads), color schemes with bad contrast, bright images on dark pages, etc. are accessibility hazards (particularly cognitive accessibility hazards). Restricting the use of page-alteration software (e.g. color and font alteration, disabling images, and blocking frames) is therefore a discriminatory practice. In a sibling subthread: > The part of your analogy where you say people who want burgers don't have any other choice seems not to fit: you can eat other foods which don't have this requirement, just like there are lots of places on the internet where you can exchange money for ad-free content. The default behavior on the Web is one in which user-agents set their terms, and websites must agree to them: https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/08/12/user-agents-set-the-terms/ https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/08/12/user-agents-set-the-term... The libertarian perspective is a two-way street. Nobody is forcing a person to publish content on the Web. If the "comply with the user's wishes" model of the Web is problematic to a content creator, they don't need to participate in the Web. POSSE (Publish on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) note from https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/09/10/in-defense-of-content-blocking/ https://seirdy.one/notes/2022/09/10/in-defense-of-content-bl...

krageon 4y ago

> What other bizarre opinions, internal or external, would they have? From experience: When your government spies on you and locks folks up without due process, this is good because it keeps the children safe. And a host of other convictions that are so toxic I cannot say them online without feeling dirty. These are the kind of people that say "think of the children" without irony, that view the world in purely adversarial terms and do their best to hate as many things as they can. They live to make everyone around them miserable. I have seen this repeatedly and only from this kind of person. I am glad I don't have them around me anymore, but sad that other people might. > I don't think that I could trust them with literally anything. It being the case that these are the purest of bad faith actors, you can at least trust them to ruin whatever they touch. It's something :)

jefftk 4y ago
> When your government spies on you and locks folks up without due process, this is good because it keeps the children safe. And a host of other convictions that are so toxic I cannot say them online without feeling dirty. These are the kind of people that say "think of the children" without irony, that view the world in purely adversarial terms and do their best to hate as many things as they can. They live to make everyone around them miserable. FWIW, I am against dragnet surveillance, in favor of due process, doubt I've ever said "think of the children" without irony, don't view the world in adversarial terms, enjoy looking for the positive aspects of things other people malign, and don't want anyone to be miserable.

colejohnson66 4y ago

> I've never met such a person. I can only imagine them to be barely human. Well that’s why. When you refuse to even listen/consider their argument, no one is going to argue with you. In addition, saying such a thing here gets you downvoted to oblivion. Doesn’t stop people from doing it; Just look at some of the other comments here.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

noelsusman 4y ago

To be blunt, this comes across as incredibly small minded. Barely human? Really? It's not difficult to imagine an argument against ad blockers. Ads pay for the content you consume on the Internet. If you don't like the ads, then your recourse is to leave the site and go elsewhere. You're not entitled to just block the ads and consume the content for free. I don't personally subscribe to that theory, but I wouldn't describe it as an insane opinion to have.

throwaway22032 4y ago
I get my friend to cut the ads out of a newspaper I bought. Maybe I make a machine to do it. Now I read it. This is somehow immoral. Cutting paper I have in my possession. Nah, that's insane, sorry. It speaks to a lack of logical thought processes.