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> People seem to think it's the browser's job to block ads, but my perspective is that if a business owner wants to make their business repulsive, the only sens

by xg15 4y ago

> People seem to think it's the browser's job to block ads, but my perspective is that if a business owner wants to make their business repulsive, the only sensible response is to stop using the business. Somehow once technology is involved to abstract what's happening, people start talking about how it's their right to unilaterally renegotiate the transaction. Or for another analogy that will likely make you upset: "I hate how this store charges $10 for a banana, so I am just going to pay $2 and take the banana anyway". What if every business owner has decided to make their business repulsive, because that's a winning strategy for them? The "don't just use that business" idea has never worked if your goal is actually to change how the market at large behaves. See the much larger industries such as food (boycott factory farming) or energy (boycott fossil fuels). Ultimately, when boycotting a business, the customer has to bear a harder cost than the business owner: The business owner loses one transaction while the customer loses the entire service. It's only effective if large numbers of customers would quit as the same time, which is almost impossible to pull off (see above). "Cheating", such as blocking ads but using the service anyway is one way to solve that power imbalance and actually put pressure on sites to look for another business model.

tjoff 4y ago
> What if every business owner has decided to make their business repulsive, because that's a winning strategy for them? Can anyone really make that argument though? Maybe making sites repulsive is the default because those that push that default earns money on it? You recognize these dark pattern modal boxes that absolutely ruin a site and you feel the complexity. The mom and pop site most assuredly did not invent this, and if they believe they even wanted it is because they were tricked into it.
tgvaughan 4y ago
I agree, although it's never "cheating" to block ads on our own devices, unless we accept that it's okay to force people from looking away Clockwork Orange-style. (Even the term "blocking" seems wrong: it's not like the ads are coming down a pipe and my "ad blocker" is bouncing them away.)
- SalimoS 4y ago
  The way i see it (an example) you as a user want to read a story that i wrote in my website but when you request it i'm embedding an ad with the story, it's my right to embed the ad and not showing what i wrote without it and it's your right to not open the website it's not perfect, im using an ad blocker and i can't understand how people can surf the internet without one but hopefully we can find a solution the change the whole free internet based on ad with something else
  - xg15 4y ago
    But the thing is that you're just sending me code. The thing that is executing the code (rendering the website) is software and hardware that I supposedly own. So I think it's reasonable to expect that those work in my interest and not in the interest of the website.
    - LunaSea 4y ago
      They are since you are able to read the article which wouldn't be possible without the ad.
      - xg15 4y ago
        It's perfectly possible to view the article without the ad if I use an adblocker.
        LunaSea 4y ago
        No, because the article wouldn't have been written without the ads.
        traverseda 4y ago
        I'm okay with that. I can't help but think the internet was better when it was mostly unpaid hobbyists and personal blogs without commercial interests. The problem is that people are using their ad budget to compete with free content, but the free content is still going to be there it will just appear higher up in the search results if various bad actors aren't paying for a bunch of SEO.
yakubin 4y ago
I find the entire analogy dubious. When I see a link, I don’t know what sort of ads or JS is on the page it leads to. By blocking ads I am not renegotiating any transactions, because I never entered any transaction. If anything, it seems the author of the post thinks it’s okay for website owners to unilaterally dictate the terms of transaction and force visitors into them. When I buy a banana, I see the price beforehand. With ads on websites it’s more as if upon me taking the banana, the banana seller gained the right to search my pockets and take anything they fancy.
- Joeri 4y ago
  This is why it is perfectly fine to use an ad blocker by default, and perfectly fine for a website to refuse access with ad blockers enabled. At least then there’s a negotiation going on.
  - RunSet 4y ago
    Further reading: https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/10/why-its-ok-to-block-ads/ https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/10/why-its-ok-to-...
  - jefftk 4y ago
    > perfectly fine for a website to refuse access with ad blockers enabled And yet ublock origin tries to work around this. About a third of their issues are "this site refuses service to people with adblockers": https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3Aissue+anti-adblock https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3Aissue+...
    - nonameiguess 4y ago
      Because they don't refuse access. They kindly ask you to disable, but don't require it, and the users of an ad blocker know damn well they're not going to voluntarily disable it if it's possible to browse the site at all with it on, so rather than rote click "continue" 90 times every two hours, let the blocker block the nagging popup as well. If these sites really don't want you there with an ad blocker, they can actually block you. I imagine they realize there is value in getting more eyeballs even without ads, whether that be that users might still recommend and create links to your content that other people without a blocker then follow, or you actually sell something and some of those people might buy it. Whatever it is, by revealed preference, those site owners seem to be indicating it's worth it to allow people to browse with an ad blocker.
haspok 4y ago
> People seem to think it's the browser's job to block ads... Yes, it absolutely is. Ads not only cost me my time and attention, but also consume resources (network bandwith, CPU time, screen real estate) that I might not want to be consumed. Just open any consumer-oriented webpage these days, and I can guarantee you will get 2-3 videos (!) or animations autoplay immediately, and a large part of your screen eaten by "garbage". Sometimes reader mode helps, sometimes it does not... One thing that I usually do is when a page shows an explicit ask to turn my adblocker off, I close that page. This is fair enough, you can call this a transaction, and I can opt out of it.
- SalimoS 4y ago
  >Yes, it absolutely is following your reasoning it's your media player job to skip the uninteresting part of a video you're watching ? no, the browser job is to display what he receive from the resource YOU requested what the server put in that resource is between you and it (you can "cheat"(not my word but liked/steal it from another comment) by drop the ad or choose to not requesting the resource all together).
  - danuker 4y ago
    > it's your media player job to skip the uninteresting part of a video you're watching ? It is. And it has a time scroller and speed controls, unless you're watching an ad. A piece of software not doing what you want is following the wishes of its creator, which differ from yours.
  - haspok 4y ago
    The proper analogy would be that the media player would play random extra videos in addition to what you are watching, in overlays or even opening new windows. Can you imagine VLC working like that? In-video ads are usually OK, the way they do "sponsor" segments on Youtube for example, they are "uninteresting" but usually short and non-obtrusive. Again, I consider these as transactions and don't skip them if otherwise I wanted to watch the video. The best creators (Jay Foreman comes to mind) do these so well that I actually look forward to watching them! Completely unrelated ads that are forcibly and blindly inserted into the video stream (again, Youtube is an example) are not okay, and I expect the browser/ad blocker to weed them out.
poszlem 4y ago
Yeah, that part of the blog post is probably the best example of: “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- izacus 4y ago
  This obviously goes both ways - some people also utterly refuse to understand just how many businesses exist because of the revenue driven from ads. Which then results in some comments here that are utterly detached from reality. It's kinda tiring really - seeing people constantly bark past each other with no understanding of nuance. But that's the modern internet I guess.
  - jansan 4y ago
    Not only frome the ads revenue, but also from being able to advertise their product to others. That is the original idea of ads. You have a products that you think is useful to others, and you need a way to let others know that this product exists and can be purchased.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    Some of us just want to go back to the days when almost all internet content we saw was made by obsessive hobbyists.
  - ufmace 4y ago
    I understand both sides, but it feels like the ad world has been in a race to the bottom for a long time. I wouldn't really mind a few simple static banner ads here and there. But it seems like every site with ads has stuck dozens of them everywhere with video and animation, and sometimes semi-malicious scripts too.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    We understand that many businesses and services wouldn’t exist without ads — we just don’t care. In fact, it’s not apathy, it’s antipathy. I think the world would be a better place if ad-supported businesses, advertisers, advertiser-driven tracking, and ad-tech companies simply did not exist.
rakoo 4y ago
The quote also perpetuates the free market myth: every actor is on an equal foot, has infinite amounts of time and energy to consider options, the alternatives exist and/or are essentially free to build, and money is not a problem. That's never been true. Somehow, there is no environment, no society at large, no inequality. I understand how someone living in the richest country working for the richest company could fool themselves into believing it, but it's incredibly shortsighted. The society we live in demands that you earn money, if you don't want to die. The only thing that you have in a high enough amount is time, so if you use time to do anything, at some point it must earn money or you die. In the digital world there is no scarcity, so the old model of physical stuff you sell for $X a piece doesn't work. There are no systems to guarantee a life to everyone, everyone has to fight for themselves. If you want to produce content, content that is not necessary to live, you necessarily enter non a competition for attention, for money, against everyone else. If people justifiably can't give you money, you must resort to the only way that gives you a survival fee: shove crap in the eyes of the reader. Give them not what they want, but what others want. Influence their decisions. It's a shitty system. The analogy is interesting because if there's a single vendor that holds what you need to survive, and they price it at an outrageously high price just for their profit, is it acceptable ? Is it OK, as a society, to say no to this practice ?
- erfgh 4y ago
  That's not what a free market is. A free market is merely one that is not regulated by the state. Stop perpetuating this strawman please.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    > A free market is merely one that is not regulated by the state No, a free market explicitly applies only to well-regulated markets, as per the very creator of the word. It doesn’t matter what regulates the market, but for all practical purposes it will be the government(s). And this is the reason why European markets are often “more free” per several metrics. A good analogy to this topic would be sport competitions. A free market is a fair, say running, race. But an anticompetitive/too large company exerting its power in different segments would be akin to someone tying the other racer’s shoes together (but I wouldn’t put past the analogy even shooting the others)
kgwxd 4y ago
It’s the browsers job to be an agent of the user, full stop. All other forms of advertisement are a deal between 2 businesses. They work out all the details of when and where an ad will be shown, and what methods will be used to verify the deal is being upheld, none of which rely on the consumer. It would be insane to expect consumers to volunteer their time and effort to fetch the ad and show it to themselves, especially before they even know what they’re getting out it. Add to that expecting the consumer to answer a large list of personal questions, and it’s downright certifiable.
criddell 4y ago
I have no problem with a business that wants to generate revenue through ads. If you want to place an ad on a billboard or on a bus or in a newspaper or a non-tracking ad online, great! The business that I'm boycotting with uBlock Origin is the one that tracks me as I move around the internet and builds a dossier on me that they sell ads against.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
> People seem to think it's the browser's job to block ads May not be the job of a web browser but it’s the job of MY web browser. I either have a web browser that blocks ads or I have a broken web browser that’s soon to be replaced.
mysterydip 4y ago
Remember when popup windows were a thing? Originally a feature for pages to show alerts or confirmations, naively implemented when the web was a less hostile place. Then sites started abusing them for their own gain, and browsers started shipping popup blockers as a feature. Sites that are "well behaved" with ads are fine to me. The problem is too many abuse the css/js capabilities of the browser to make a result similar to the popup problems of yore. The only sane solution from a consumer point of view is block by default and whitelist the good places.
isleyaardvark 4y ago
> What if every business owner decided to make their business repulsive It’s not even a “what if”, we all experience it on a daily basis. https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/ https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> Somehow once technology is involved to abstract what's happening, people start talking about how it's their right to unilaterally renegotiate the transaction. It is our right. These corporations do the exact same thing, they change their little terms of service all the time, often without notice, and we're forced to swallow it. Why is it suddenly wrong when we do it? Because it costs them money? Fuck their money, we owe them nothing. > Or for another analogy that will likely make you upset: "I hate how this store charges $10 for a banana, so I am just going to pay $2 and take the banana anyway Complete bullshit analogy. There is no "transaction". There never was, not even once, a "transaction". Only assumptions. They are not charging us anything. They're giving us the banana for free after putting some advertising stamps on it. They're hoping we'll look at the ads but the fact is we are under exactly zero obligation to do so. We invented technology that peels the bananas automatically and gives us the fruit while throwing the trash away and the ads along with it. Our attention is not currency, nor can it be sold to the highest bidder. We are under exactly zero obligation to "pay" with our attention. Zero. > "Cheating", such as blocking ads but using the service anyway is one way to solve that power imbalance and actually put pressure on sites to look for another business model. Absolutely agree. Businesses are the ones that come to us with their idiotic "our way or the highway, take it or leave it" deals. Functionality such as ad blocking is absolutely vital for consumers because it empowers them to alter the deal. It doesn't really matter what the corporation thinks, the deal is gonna be altered whether it likes it or not. Such is the power of adversarial interoperability, the nightmare of every monopolist. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...

by xg15 4y ago

tjoff 4y ago

> What if every business owner has decided to make their business repulsive, because that's a winning strategy for them? Can anyone really make that argument though? Maybe making sites repulsive is the default because those that push that default earns money on it? You recognize these dark pattern modal boxes that absolutely ruin a site and you feel the complexity. The mom and pop site most assuredly did not invent this, and if they believe they even wanted it is because they were tricked into it.

tgvaughan 4y ago

I agree, although it's never "cheating" to block ads on our own devices, unless we accept that it's okay to force people from looking away Clockwork Orange-style. (Even the term "blocking" seems wrong: it's not like the ads are coming down a pipe and my "ad blocker" is bouncing them away.)

SalimoS 4y ago
The way i see it (an example) you as a user want to read a story that i wrote in my website but when you request it i'm embedding an ad with the story, it's my right to embed the ad and not showing what i wrote without it and it's your right to not open the website it's not perfect, im using an ad blocker and i can't understand how people can surf the internet without one but hopefully we can find a solution the change the whole free internet based on ad with something else
- xg15 4y ago
  But the thing is that you're just sending me code. The thing that is executing the code (rendering the website) is software and hardware that I supposedly own. So I think it's reasonable to expect that those work in my interest and not in the interest of the website.
  - LunaSea 4y ago
    They are since you are able to read the article which wouldn't be possible without the ad.
    - xg15 4y ago
      It's perfectly possible to view the article without the ad if I use an adblocker.
      - LunaSea 4y ago
        No, because the article wouldn't have been written without the ads.
        traverseda 4y ago
        I'm okay with that. I can't help but think the internet was better when it was mostly unpaid hobbyists and personal blogs without commercial interests. The problem is that people are using their ad budget to compete with free content, but the free content is still going to be there it will just appear higher up in the search results if various bad actors aren't paying for a bunch of SEO.

yakubin 4y ago

I find the entire analogy dubious. When I see a link, I don’t know what sort of ads or JS is on the page it leads to. By blocking ads I am not renegotiating any transactions, because I never entered any transaction. If anything, it seems the author of the post thinks it’s okay for website owners to unilaterally dictate the terms of transaction and force visitors into them. When I buy a banana, I see the price beforehand. With ads on websites it’s more as if upon me taking the banana, the banana seller gained the right to search my pockets and take anything they fancy.

Joeri 4y ago
This is why it is perfectly fine to use an ad blocker by default, and perfectly fine for a website to refuse access with ad blockers enabled. At least then there’s a negotiation going on.
- RunSet 4y ago
  Further reading: https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/10/why-its-ok-to-block-ads/ https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/10/why-its-ok-to-...
- jefftk 4y ago
  > perfectly fine for a website to refuse access with ad blockers enabled And yet ublock origin tries to work around this. About a third of their issues are "this site refuses service to people with adblockers": https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3Aissue+anti-adblock https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3Aissue+...
  - nonameiguess 4y ago
    Because they don't refuse access. They kindly ask you to disable, but don't require it, and the users of an ad blocker know damn well they're not going to voluntarily disable it if it's possible to browse the site at all with it on, so rather than rote click "continue" 90 times every two hours, let the blocker block the nagging popup as well. If these sites really don't want you there with an ad blocker, they can actually block you. I imagine they realize there is value in getting more eyeballs even without ads, whether that be that users might still recommend and create links to your content that other people without a blocker then follow, or you actually sell something and some of those people might buy it. Whatever it is, by revealed preference, those site owners seem to be indicating it's worth it to allow people to browse with an ad blocker.

haspok 4y ago

> People seem to think it's the browser's job to block ads... Yes, it absolutely is. Ads not only cost me my time and attention, but also consume resources (network bandwith, CPU time, screen real estate) that I might not want to be consumed. Just open any consumer-oriented webpage these days, and I can guarantee you will get 2-3 videos (!) or animations autoplay immediately, and a large part of your screen eaten by "garbage". Sometimes reader mode helps, sometimes it does not... One thing that I usually do is when a page shows an explicit ask to turn my adblocker off, I close that page. This is fair enough, you can call this a transaction, and I can opt out of it.

SalimoS 4y ago
>Yes, it absolutely is following your reasoning it's your media player job to skip the uninteresting part of a video you're watching ? no, the browser job is to display what he receive from the resource YOU requested what the server put in that resource is between you and it (you can "cheat"(not my word but liked/steal it from another comment) by drop the ad or choose to not requesting the resource all together).
- danuker 4y ago
  > it's your media player job to skip the uninteresting part of a video you're watching ? It is. And it has a time scroller and speed controls, unless you're watching an ad. A piece of software not doing what you want is following the wishes of its creator, which differ from yours.
- haspok 4y ago
  The proper analogy would be that the media player would play random extra videos in addition to what you are watching, in overlays or even opening new windows. Can you imagine VLC working like that? In-video ads are usually OK, the way they do "sponsor" segments on Youtube for example, they are "uninteresting" but usually short and non-obtrusive. Again, I consider these as transactions and don't skip them if otherwise I wanted to watch the video. The best creators (Jay Foreman comes to mind) do these so well that I actually look forward to watching them! Completely unrelated ads that are forcibly and blindly inserted into the video stream (again, Youtube is an example) are not okay, and I expect the browser/ad blocker to weed them out.

poszlem 4y ago

Yeah, that part of the blog post is probably the best example of: “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

izacus 4y ago
This obviously goes both ways - some people also utterly refuse to understand just how many businesses exist because of the revenue driven from ads. Which then results in some comments here that are utterly detached from reality. It's kinda tiring really - seeing people constantly bark past each other with no understanding of nuance. But that's the modern internet I guess.
- jansan 4y ago
  Not only frome the ads revenue, but also from being able to advertise their product to others. That is the original idea of ads. You have a products that you think is useful to others, and you need a way to let others know that this product exists and can be purchased.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Some of us just want to go back to the days when almost all internet content we saw was made by obsessive hobbyists.
- ufmace 4y ago
  I understand both sides, but it feels like the ad world has been in a race to the bottom for a long time. I wouldn't really mind a few simple static banner ads here and there. But it seems like every site with ads has stuck dozens of them everywhere with video and animation, and sometimes semi-malicious scripts too.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  We understand that many businesses and services wouldn’t exist without ads — we just don’t care. In fact, it’s not apathy, it’s antipathy. I think the world would be a better place if ad-supported businesses, advertisers, advertiser-driven tracking, and ad-tech companies simply did not exist.

rakoo 4y ago

The quote also perpetuates the free market myth: every actor is on an equal foot, has infinite amounts of time and energy to consider options, the alternatives exist and/or are essentially free to build, and money is not a problem. That's never been true. Somehow, there is no environment, no society at large, no inequality. I understand how someone living in the richest country working for the richest company could fool themselves into believing it, but it's incredibly shortsighted. The society we live in demands that you earn money, if you don't want to die. The only thing that you have in a high enough amount is time, so if you use time to do anything, at some point it must earn money or you die. In the digital world there is no scarcity, so the old model of physical stuff you sell for $X a piece doesn't work. There are no systems to guarantee a life to everyone, everyone has to fight for themselves. If you want to produce content, content that is not necessary to live, you necessarily enter non a competition for attention, for money, against everyone else. If people justifiably can't give you money, you must resort to the only way that gives you a survival fee: shove crap in the eyes of the reader. Give them not what they want, but what others want. Influence their decisions. It's a shitty system. The analogy is interesting because if there's a single vendor that holds what you need to survive, and they price it at an outrageously high price just for their profit, is it acceptable ? Is it OK, as a society, to say no to this practice ?

erfgh 4y ago
That's not what a free market is. A free market is merely one that is not regulated by the state. Stop perpetuating this strawman please.
- kaba0 4y ago
  > A free market is merely one that is not regulated by the state No, a free market explicitly applies only to well-regulated markets, as per the very creator of the word. It doesn’t matter what regulates the market, but for all practical purposes it will be the government(s). And this is the reason why European markets are often “more free” per several metrics. A good analogy to this topic would be sport competitions. A free market is a fair, say running, race. But an anticompetitive/too large company exerting its power in different segments would be akin to someone tying the other racer’s shoes together (but I wouldn’t put past the analogy even shooting the others)

kgwxd 4y ago

It’s the browsers job to be an agent of the user, full stop. All other forms of advertisement are a deal between 2 businesses. They work out all the details of when and where an ad will be shown, and what methods will be used to verify the deal is being upheld, none of which rely on the consumer. It would be insane to expect consumers to volunteer their time and effort to fetch the ad and show it to themselves, especially before they even know what they’re getting out it. Add to that expecting the consumer to answer a large list of personal questions, and it’s downright certifiable.

criddell 4y ago

I have no problem with a business that wants to generate revenue through ads. If you want to place an ad on a billboard or on a bus or in a newspaper or a non-tracking ad online, great! The business that I'm boycotting with uBlock Origin is the one that tracks me as I move around the internet and builds a dossier on me that they sell ads against.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

> People seem to think it's the browser's job to block ads May not be the job of a web browser but it’s the job of MY web browser. I either have a web browser that blocks ads or I have a broken web browser that’s soon to be replaced.

mysterydip 4y ago

Remember when popup windows were a thing? Originally a feature for pages to show alerts or confirmations, naively implemented when the web was a less hostile place. Then sites started abusing them for their own gain, and browsers started shipping popup blockers as a feature. Sites that are "well behaved" with ads are fine to me. The problem is too many abuse the css/js capabilities of the browser to make a result similar to the popup problems of yore. The only sane solution from a consumer point of view is block by default and whitelist the good places.

isleyaardvark 4y ago

> What if every business owner decided to make their business repulsive It’s not even a “what if”, we all experience it on a daily basis. https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/ https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/

matheusmoreira 4y ago

> Somehow once technology is involved to abstract what's happening, people start talking about how it's their right to unilaterally renegotiate the transaction. It is our right. These corporations do the exact same thing, they change their little terms of service all the time, often without notice, and we're forced to swallow it. Why is it suddenly wrong when we do it? Because it costs them money? Fuck their money, we owe them nothing. > Or for another analogy that will likely make you upset: "I hate how this store charges $10 for a banana, so I am just going to pay $2 and take the banana anyway Complete bullshit analogy. There is no "transaction". There never was, not even once, a "transaction". Only assumptions. They are not charging us anything. They're giving us the banana for free after putting some advertising stamps on it. They're hoping we'll look at the ads but the fact is we are under exactly zero obligation to do so. We invented technology that peels the bananas automatically and gives us the fruit while throwing the trash away and the ads along with it. Our attention is not currency, nor can it be sold to the highest bidder. We are under exactly zero obligation to "pay" with our attention. Zero. > "Cheating", such as blocking ads but using the service anyway is one way to solve that power imbalance and actually put pressure on sites to look for another business model. Absolutely agree. Businesses are the ones that come to us with their idiotic "our way or the highway, take it or leave it" deals. Functionality such as ad blocking is absolutely vital for consumers because it empowers them to alter the deal. It doesn't really matter what the corporation thinks, the deal is gonna be altered whether it likes it or not. Such is the power of adversarial interoperability, the nightmare of every monopolist. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...