4 ms·

Is Google stealing from them when they crawl their pages but don't load in the ads? What about when I wget their page? Am I stealing from them now? Maybe when I

Is Google stealing from them when they crawl their pages but don't load in the ads? What about when I wget their page? Am I stealing from them now? Maybe when I disable javascript in my browser? Am I now a thief? No, I am not. It's not stealing whatsoever, ever. Even if they detect you're not loading in all the content they want you to load. If they manage to detect this, then they can choose to block your access to the content. Or perhaps rework their revenue model if it turns out it isn't working.

npizzolato 11y ago
Not the op but, I often disable adblock on sites I enjoy because I feel similarly. I'm not really interested in a semantic debate about what is or is not "stealing," but it certainly deprives others of revenue for creating content I get value from. When that content is otherwise free except for ads, it makes me feel rather shitty to go out of my way to block their revenue stream. Edit: that said, I do still keep adblock on for sites with rather abusive or obnoxious ads.
- a3n 11y ago
  Virtually every ad is abusive or obnoxious, because they track you. That's probably the leverage that makes online ads worthwhile. That's for better targeted ads, what could be wrong with that (unless maybe you see an ad for sex toys while you're looking at a site with your kid, oops). But data about you can be misused, or stolen and misused, and it's better in general to just not let the data be collected; you don't really know what they're doing with it. Interesting observation: ad networks collect data about us, they can clearly identify us as individuals (which is why you see those sex toy ads after visiting a sex toy site, for hypothetical example). But there was never a privacy statement involved.
  - npizzolato 11y ago
    We're obviously going to have different definitions of abusive and obnoxious, but for the record I don't find tracking that I visited a website to fall under that category. I was speaking more for pop ups and things that play video or music. And as I said, adblock has it's uses. If you don't want your kids to see ads for sex toys, nothing wrong with using adblock when visiting those types of sites.

npizzolato 11y ago

Not the op but, I often disable adblock on sites I enjoy because I feel similarly. I'm not really interested in a semantic debate about what is or is not "stealing," but it certainly deprives others of revenue for creating content I get value from. When that content is otherwise free except for ads, it makes me feel rather shitty to go out of my way to block their revenue stream. Edit: that said, I do still keep adblock on for sites with rather abusive or obnoxious ads.

a3n 11y ago
Virtually every ad is abusive or obnoxious, because they track you. That's probably the leverage that makes online ads worthwhile. That's for better targeted ads, what could be wrong with that (unless maybe you see an ad for sex toys while you're looking at a site with your kid, oops). But data about you can be misused, or stolen and misused, and it's better in general to just not let the data be collected; you don't really know what they're doing with it. Interesting observation: ad networks collect data about us, they can clearly identify us as individuals (which is why you see those sex toy ads after visiting a sex toy site, for hypothetical example). But there was never a privacy statement involved.
- npizzolato 11y ago
  We're obviously going to have different definitions of abusive and obnoxious, but for the record I don't find tracking that I visited a website to fall under that category. I was speaking more for pop ups and things that play video or music. And as I said, adblock has it's uses. If you don't want your kids to see ads for sex toys, nothing wrong with using adblock when visiting those types of sites.