5 ms·

I don't eat meat and I don't use adblockers - both habits make me feel morally superior ;)

by netrus 12y ago

jumpwah 12y ago
Why do you think adblockers are immoral? Genuine question, not trying to stand on some moral high ground, just curious of your opinion, is all.
- eli 12y ago
  Ads are part of a social contract you have with the publisher of the site.
  - alextgordon 12y ago
    Ads are a form of manipulation that somehow we have been convinced is acceptable for the mere act of reading.
    - krapp 12y ago
      Almost every form of communication between people is an attempt at manipulation. For instance, your comment is attempting to manipulate people into seeing advertising is a form of brainwashing. As attempts at manipulation go, though, advertising is at least up front and overt about its intentions. Can anyone say the same about politics, the media, even Hacker News?
      - alextgordon 12y ago
        The difference is that I honestly believe that advertising is manipulative (and I think there is good evidence!). I don't stand to gain any money if I convince you. I am not, I hope, spreading falsehoods. I'm certainly not preying on your innate desires for food or sex. I'm not installing malware on your computer. I'm not building a profile of your interests. I'm not autoplaying a video if you mouseover this comment! For the record, I am perfectly happy with ads that are just the name of the product and a static picture (a la the Deck).
        krapp 12y ago
        I can certainly agree with you that there should be no place for malware, aggressive or intrusive advertising on the web. I'm not convinced that they're effective enough that they're dangerous, though. I'm more concerned by viral advertising than I am web banners. Arguably, the only reason viral marketing exists is that advertising is so useless, otherwise, online. And realistically, not everyone advertising is trying to deceive. There's nothing necessarily wrong with trying to convince someone to buy your product if you think you have a product worth selling.
      - tomp 12y ago
        I disagree; all communication has a purpose, but manipulation is communication that intentionally conceals it's true purpose and tries to deceive you. For example, saying "buy tickets for concert of band X at venue Y at time Z" or "if you have haemorrhoids, buy drug W", are "good", non-manipulative ads. On the other hand, "click here to earn 1000 a day", "you are 1000th visitor, you win", or displaying an image of a happy family in an attempt to anchor your brand to the viewer's idea of happiness is "bad", manipulative kind of advertising. I don't oppose "good" advertising; I just think it should be limited (to information boards, Google, Craigslist, ...). However, most advertising is the bad kind, and I categorically oppose it.
  - barrkel 12y ago
    I'm suspicious of products that are heavily promoted. If anything, I'm doing the ad purchaser a favour by not having their blinking ads shoved down my throat. Pretty much any form of animation on a page causes me to stop reading it, until I can find some way of eliminating it. Too many ads are animated to risk going without an adblocker, flash blocking and disabling of autoplay etc. And it's not just ads. It's currently fashionable to have all sorts of slide overs as you near the end of an article. Those cause me to stop reading too, until I've killed the elements that caused the slide over. Similarly with floating page headers (vertical space is at a premium), floating social button menus, etc. And of course, then there's custom fonts. For years, I viewed the web with custom font downloading disabled, until the near ubiquity of FontAwesome forced me to concede. But I still run a plugin to disable font choices, and will run pages through a Readable bookmarklet if the designer has prioritized style over legibility. I don't really see the relationship between me and site publishers as a social contract. It's much more hostile than that. They try to ram an incredible amount of crap into my sensory input, and I defend myself from their assault every way I can.
  - jumpwah 12y ago
    Honestly I just see it as blocking a list of domains or whatever right? I mean yeah if you care about the site and the loss in revenue of you using adblock may hurt you too if the site is hampered/dies, and so it may be in your interest to not use adblockers. But, in my opinion of course, I don't think it's 'immoral' to block ads and stop their revenue if you don't care about it, we should have the ability to block domains right? The question is whether or not it's right to do so, if I'm thinking correctly. But believe it or not, I'm actually quite new to this 'debate'(?), just my first raw thoughts on this. I guess it's probably not as simple as what I just said..
- sysk 12y ago
  This debate has been done to death on HN but the short version is that people who use ad blockers are essentially freeloading on people who don't block them. For many websites, no ads = no revenue = no content/service.
  - snlacks 12y ago
    There's a difference between ads and ads that are likely to end up loading malware with a few accidental clicks or distasteful ads for pornography, or ads that talk, or ads that do all three. "Are you a boy or a girl?" Popping up when I'm in my office at home is something that makes me want to use adblock. And I don't use adblock.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    So ironic to be talking about freeloading off a site that exists to freeload off content creators.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - waxjar 12y ago
    It's a valid argument, but does not address any privacy issues. The author of µBlock describes it well: "Foreword: Using a blocker is NOT theft. Do not fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of "blocking = theft" is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy." https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#%C2%B5block-for-chromium https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#%C2%B5block-for-chromium
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > For many websites, no ads = no revenue = no content/service. Honestly? In my long time of adblock-free browsing I've noticed an interesting correlation - the more ads there are on a page and the crappier they get, the less trustworthy and useful the site itself is. Moreover, heavily advertised products tend to be crap designed to extract money from you by luring you into a suboptimal choice. Ads are a good proxy for both crappiness of the product and of the site that shows them. From what I see, if AdBlock kills anything, it kills sites that have no business being on the Internet in the first place, because they waste people's time.
- MattConfluence 12y ago
  Kant's categorical imperative: > Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. If everyone blocked ads the websites that rely on ad revenue would lose money and have to shut down. Sure, if only some of the users block ads they can probably survive, but someone had to see the ads. How do I justify that I get to block ads while others don't? That said, without adblock I do find NoScript to be a necessity when navigating some parts of the web (e.g. TPB), which has the side effect of being a sort-of ad-block. But that I can live with.
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    > Kant's categorical imperative: > > Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. For what it's worth (and perhaps you intended it this way), this is a somewhat shallow application of the categorical imperative. There are other ways to justify using AdBlock (and in fact, condemn not using AdBlock) by means of the categorical imperative. For example: "If everyone uses AdBlock to prevent sleazy ads that can contain malware, then those ads will no longer have value, and they will cease to exist." If you think of AdBlock as a vaccine, then by the categorical imperative, it's necessary to vaccinate everyone[0]. Or, "If everyone uses AdBlock, then websites will have to invent monetization tactics that don't involve auctioning off its user's eyeballs and privacy". If you consider ads to be an intrusion and invasion of privacy, then killing the ad-supported model could actually be a good thing. I don't really want to get into a debate on adblockers in general, because the topic has been beaten to death on HN before, but I just felt compelled[1] to make this note about the categorical imperative for the sake of others reading this. [0] This is also a somewhat simplistic reduction, but you get the idea. [1] (Yes, that's a Kant pun)
    - amelius 12y ago
      I knew nothing about Kant's imperative before I read this, still I thought almost exactly the same thing. I say it's a good thing we can vote with our adblockers.
  - officemonkey 12y ago

I don't eat meat and I don't use adblockers - both habits make me feel morally superior ;)

by netrus 12y ago

I don't eat meat and I don't use adblockers - both habits make me feel morally superior ;)

Why do you think adblockers are immoral? Genuine question, not trying to stand on some moral high ground, just curious of your opinion, is all.

eli 12y ago
Ads are part of a social contract you have with the publisher of the site.
- alextgordon 12y ago
  Ads are a form of manipulation that somehow we have been convinced is acceptable for the mere act of reading.
  - krapp 12y ago
    Almost every form of communication between people is an attempt at manipulation. For instance, your comment is attempting to manipulate people into seeing advertising is a form of brainwashing. As attempts at manipulation go, though, advertising is at least up front and overt about its intentions. Can anyone say the same about politics, the media, even Hacker News?
    - alextgordon 12y ago
      The difference is that I honestly believe that advertising is manipulative (and I think there is good evidence!). I don't stand to gain any money if I convince you. I am not, I hope, spreading falsehoods. I'm certainly not preying on your innate desires for food or sex. I'm not installing malware on your computer. I'm not building a profile of your interests. I'm not autoplaying a video if you mouseover this comment! For the record, I am perfectly happy with ads that are just the name of the product and a static picture (a la the Deck).
      - krapp 12y ago
        I can certainly agree with you that there should be no place for malware, aggressive or intrusive advertising on the web. I'm not convinced that they're effective enough that they're dangerous, though. I'm more concerned by viral advertising than I am web banners. Arguably, the only reason viral marketing exists is that advertising is so useless, otherwise, online. And realistically, not everyone advertising is trying to deceive. There's nothing necessarily wrong with trying to convince someone to buy your product if you think you have a product worth selling.
    - tomp 12y ago
      I disagree; all communication has a purpose, but manipulation is communication that intentionally conceals it's true purpose and tries to deceive you. For example, saying "buy tickets for concert of band X at venue Y at time Z" or "if you have haemorrhoids, buy drug W", are "good", non-manipulative ads. On the other hand, "click here to earn 1000 a day", "you are 1000th visitor, you win", or displaying an image of a happy family in an attempt to anchor your brand to the viewer's idea of happiness is "bad", manipulative kind of advertising. I don't oppose "good" advertising; I just think it should be limited (to information boards, Google, Craigslist, ...). However, most advertising is the bad kind, and I categorically oppose it.
- barrkel 12y ago
  I'm suspicious of products that are heavily promoted. If anything, I'm doing the ad purchaser a favour by not having their blinking ads shoved down my throat. Pretty much any form of animation on a page causes me to stop reading it, until I can find some way of eliminating it. Too many ads are animated to risk going without an adblocker, flash blocking and disabling of autoplay etc. And it's not just ads. It's currently fashionable to have all sorts of slide overs as you near the end of an article. Those cause me to stop reading too, until I've killed the elements that caused the slide over. Similarly with floating page headers (vertical space is at a premium), floating social button menus, etc. And of course, then there's custom fonts. For years, I viewed the web with custom font downloading disabled, until the near ubiquity of FontAwesome forced me to concede. But I still run a plugin to disable font choices, and will run pages through a Readable bookmarklet if the designer has prioritized style over legibility. I don't really see the relationship between me and site publishers as a social contract. It's much more hostile than that. They try to ram an incredible amount of crap into my sensory input, and I defend myself from their assault every way I can.
- jumpwah 12y ago
  Honestly I just see it as blocking a list of domains or whatever right? I mean yeah if you care about the site and the loss in revenue of you using adblock may hurt you too if the site is hampered/dies, and so it may be in your interest to not use adblockers. But, in my opinion of course, I don't think it's 'immoral' to block ads and stop their revenue if you don't care about it, we should have the ability to block domains right? The question is whether or not it's right to do so, if I'm thinking correctly. But believe it or not, I'm actually quite new to this 'debate'(?), just my first raw thoughts on this. I guess it's probably not as simple as what I just said..
sysk 12y ago
This debate has been done to death on HN but the short version is that people who use ad blockers are essentially freeloading on people who don't block them. For many websites, no ads = no revenue = no content/service.
- snlacks 12y ago
  There's a difference between ads and ads that are likely to end up loading malware with a few accidental clicks or distasteful ads for pornography, or ads that talk, or ads that do all three. "Are you a boy or a girl?" Popping up when I'm in my office at home is something that makes me want to use adblock. And I don't use adblock.
- rayiner 12y ago
  So ironic to be talking about freeloading off a site that exists to freeload off content creators.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- waxjar 12y ago
  It's a valid argument, but does not address any privacy issues. The author of µBlock describes it well: "Foreword: Using a blocker is NOT theft. Do not fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of "blocking = theft" is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy." https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#%C2%B5block-for-chromium https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#%C2%B5block-for-chromium
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > For many websites, no ads = no revenue = no content/service. Honestly? In my long time of adblock-free browsing I've noticed an interesting correlation - the more ads there are on a page and the crappier they get, the less trustworthy and useful the site itself is. Moreover, heavily advertised products tend to be crap designed to extract money from you by luring you into a suboptimal choice. Ads are a good proxy for both crappiness of the product and of the site that shows them. From what I see, if AdBlock kills anything, it kills sites that have no business being on the Internet in the first place, because they waste people's time.
MattConfluence 12y ago
Kant's categorical imperative: > Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. If everyone blocked ads the websites that rely on ad revenue would lose money and have to shut down. Sure, if only some of the users block ads they can probably survive, but someone had to see the ads. How do I justify that I get to block ads while others don't? That said, without adblock I do find NoScript to be a necessity when navigating some parts of the web (e.g. TPB), which has the side effect of being a sort-of ad-block. But that I can live with.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > Kant's categorical imperative: > > Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. For what it's worth (and perhaps you intended it this way), this is a somewhat shallow application of the categorical imperative. There are other ways to justify using AdBlock (and in fact, condemn not using AdBlock) by means of the categorical imperative. For example: "If everyone uses AdBlock to prevent sleazy ads that can contain malware, then those ads will no longer have value, and they will cease to exist." If you think of AdBlock as a vaccine, then by the categorical imperative, it's necessary to vaccinate everyone[0]. Or, "If everyone uses AdBlock, then websites will have to invent monetization tactics that don't involve auctioning off its user's eyeballs and privacy". If you consider ads to be an intrusion and invasion of privacy, then killing the ad-supported model could actually be a good thing. I don't really want to get into a debate on adblockers in general, because the topic has been beaten to death on HN before, but I just felt compelled[1] to make this note about the categorical imperative for the sake of others reading this. [0] This is also a somewhat simplistic reduction, but you get the idea. [1] (Yes, that's a Kant pun)
  - amelius 12y ago
    I knew nothing about Kant's imperative before I read this, still I thought almost exactly the same thing. I say it's a good thing we can vote with our adblockers.
- officemonkey 12y ago