5 ms·

What sites are you encountering those ads on? You could blacklist them, rather than universally denying revenue.

wutbrodo 12y ago
This is what I've never understood about the people claiming that "they have no choice" or that they feel morally justified in denying revenue to authors and other content creators. I don't use ABP, but it's really not that much effort to have to see bad ads on each "bad" domain _once_, and then blacklist and not have to deal with that entire domain and their bad ads ever again. I do something quite similar with a JS blacklist (mostly for poorly-coded newspapers where I can't even scroll until they fetch some non-main-content resources over JS).
- fwn 12y ago
  > "feel morally justified in denying revenue to authors and other content creators" I do think that only a very small portion of adblocking users wants to "justify" anything in this regard. Most just don't want to see ads and skip the faulty and economically biased moral debate around it. edit: While I agree that the blacklisting solution shouldn't be too much work, the charming "setup and forget" experience most adblockers provide will probably win through.
  - tracker1 12y ago
    O pretty much never click on ads, so ppc campaigns are worthless on me... as to ppv ads, most of them are obnoxious.. including on the main site I work for... I tend to whitelist it only because I need to make sure ads work. That said, thankfully the new design has fewer ads, which should help a lot. It really just depends, it's easy to go down a rabbit whole with ads... but we get 90% if our ad revenue from 40% of our ads. So cutting out a lot changes the layout of income without nearly so much impact on revenue.
  - wutbrodo 12y ago
    > I do think that only a very small portion of adblocking users wants to "justify" anything in this regard. Most just don't want to see ads and skip the faulty and economically biased moral debate around it. This is possibly true, but not particularly relevant, as my comment mentions that I'm talking specifically about those who _do_ engage in moral justification. Among the people with whom I've talked about it, those who claim a moral justification are far more common than those who simply say "I don't like ads and I don't care about creators not getting paid". I would be surprised if there weren't many HNers whose sample is similar to mine. Tangentially but not importantly, I'm not convinced that only a small portion of users openly think "yes I'm consuming a product without paying and I have no other justification other than 'i dont want to pay' ". Part of the reason you see such contortions in an attempt at moral justification is because one can draw a pretty clear parallel to "I would shoplift if I didn't think I'd get caught", with the only (somewhat dubious) distinction being differences in marginal cost. Note that I have talked to people who have a moral stance on adblocking and piracy that _is_ consistent, but this is rare since it's usually accompanied by a pretty radical stance along the lines of "all information (music, art, writing, etc) should be completely free", which requires a pretty massive amount of philosophical baggage in terms of having a sense of how this affects the incentive to create said information.
    - kazagistar 12y ago
      Is "I am willing to pay through monotization models that are not ads" a consistent view in your perspective?
      - wutbrodo 12y ago
        Of course, but that's not relevant in the slightest. Independently of whether or not one is happy with non-ad monetization, the decision under discussion is: "In the _absence_ of non-ad monetization for a given product, do I decide that the transaction (view ads, get the product) is not for me or do I unilaterally decide to take the product without compensation".
- Zuider 12y ago
  >...but it's really not that much effort to have to see bad ads on each "bad" domain _once_, and then blacklist... I don't want to download a trojan from a malicious ad-server. Not even once.

This is what I've never understood about the people claiming that "they have no choice" or that they feel morally justified in denying revenue to authors and other content creators. I don't use ABP, but it's really not that much effort to have to see bad ads on each "bad" domain _once_, and then blacklist and not have to deal with that entire domain and their bad ads ever again. I do something quite similar with a JS blacklist (mostly for poorly-coded newspapers where I can't even scroll until they fetch some non-main-content resources over JS).

fwn 12y ago
> "feel morally justified in denying revenue to authors and other content creators" I do think that only a very small portion of adblocking users wants to "justify" anything in this regard. Most just don't want to see ads and skip the faulty and economically biased moral debate around it. edit: While I agree that the blacklisting solution shouldn't be too much work, the charming "setup and forget" experience most adblockers provide will probably win through.
- tracker1 12y ago
  O pretty much never click on ads, so ppc campaigns are worthless on me... as to ppv ads, most of them are obnoxious.. including on the main site I work for... I tend to whitelist it only because I need to make sure ads work. That said, thankfully the new design has fewer ads, which should help a lot. It really just depends, it's easy to go down a rabbit whole with ads... but we get 90% if our ad revenue from 40% of our ads. So cutting out a lot changes the layout of income without nearly so much impact on revenue.
- wutbrodo 12y ago
  > I do think that only a very small portion of adblocking users wants to "justify" anything in this regard. Most just don't want to see ads and skip the faulty and economically biased moral debate around it. This is possibly true, but not particularly relevant, as my comment mentions that I'm talking specifically about those who _do_ engage in moral justification. Among the people with whom I've talked about it, those who claim a moral justification are far more common than those who simply say "I don't like ads and I don't care about creators not getting paid". I would be surprised if there weren't many HNers whose sample is similar to mine. Tangentially but not importantly, I'm not convinced that only a small portion of users openly think "yes I'm consuming a product without paying and I have no other justification other than 'i dont want to pay' ". Part of the reason you see such contortions in an attempt at moral justification is because one can draw a pretty clear parallel to "I would shoplift if I didn't think I'd get caught", with the only (somewhat dubious) distinction being differences in marginal cost. Note that I have talked to people who have a moral stance on adblocking and piracy that _is_ consistent, but this is rare since it's usually accompanied by a pretty radical stance along the lines of "all information (music, art, writing, etc) should be completely free", which requires a pretty massive amount of philosophical baggage in terms of having a sense of how this affects the incentive to create said information.
  - kazagistar 12y ago
    Is "I am willing to pay through monotization models that are not ads" a consistent view in your perspective?
    - wutbrodo 12y ago
      Of course, but that's not relevant in the slightest. Independently of whether or not one is happy with non-ad monetization, the decision under discussion is: "In the _absence_ of non-ad monetization for a given product, do I decide that the transaction (view ads, get the product) is not for me or do I unilaterally decide to take the product without compensation".
Zuider 12y ago
>...but it's really not that much effort to have to see bad ads on each "bad" domain _once_, and then blacklist... I don't want to download a trojan from a malicious ad-server. Not even once.