7 ms·

> It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people. No, it's more like asking the n

by baddox 11y ago

> It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people. No, it's more like asking the newspaper publisher if you can have a version of their newspaper (for your own use) without ads, and them obliging. Blocking ads has nothing to do with redistributing someone else's content.

kbenson 11y ago
> Blocking ads has nothing to do with redistributing someone else's content. You're right, it's like subscribing to a service that does it for you. > No, it's more like asking the newspaper publisher if you can have a version of their newspaper (for your own use) without ads, and them obliging. No, if they had an easy way to enforce your viewing of ads that scaled, I think it's fairly obvious they would (as many of the blocked ads are indeed an attempt at this, such as the timed overlay). It's more like the distributor responding with both marketing material and content with the understanding you are to view the marketing material along with the content, and you routing the marketing material to the trash from the post office (or somehow tricking the system into not sending you the marketing material). The expectation you are to view the marketing material is still there, even if you've somehow removed your ability to receive it.
- baddox 11y ago
  > You're right, it's like subscribing to a service that does it for you. You mean the blacklist services? Those are just a list of URL rules for your browser to reject. You still request the content from the web and the content provider obliges. > No, if they had an easy way to enforce your viewing of ads that scaled, I think it's fairly obvious they would Given that I have seen several websites that do this, I think you must be wrong. > It's more like the distributor responding with both marketing material and content with the understanding you are to view the marketing material along with the content, and you routing the marketing material to the trash from the post office Yes, it is like that, and I having no qualms with doing that. If I received a free magazine full of good content, along with a separate booklet of ads that are intended to be views with the content, I would have no problem reading the content and ignoring the ad booklet.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    That's your choice, but I don't think it addresses whether the action is moral or not (unless you also ascertain that you refrain from all morally ambiguous actions), or whether it's bad manners (as the initiating comment termed it). I think there are a great many slightly immoral things that people do every day and justify by weighing how small the moral infraction is against the perceived benefit to themselves. The perceived benefit of not being annoyed by ads outweighs the slight immorality of circumventing those ads. It feels like a negligible harm to the other party, so we justify it to ourselves as victim-less, but it's not. The combined harm of all those that do so adds up the what is certainly a non-negligent level of harm in many cases. This is not unique to advertising, we fall prey to this reasoning in many ways, and in some ways we've seen that harm manifested in obvious ways that have then changed our behavior. Consider littering. The harm of a single person dropping a small amount of trash on the ground is negligent, the cost of most of a nation's population doing so is definitely not.
    - baddox 11y ago
      > It feels like a negligible harm to the other party, so we justify it to ourselves as victim-less, but it's not. The combined harm of all those that do so adds up the what is certainly a non-negligent level of harm in many cases. Think of it this way. Ad revenue is based on CPM, or cost per thousand ad views [0], which is itself based on the expected return of an ad view. The expected return obviously depends on how many people make purchases for the products advertised to them. So, using your same logic, you could conclude that refraining from buying a product that you see an advertisement for is causing harm to sites that are ad-supported. [0] Yes, most web advertising is not CPM. I'm simplifying for the sake of the analogy, and the same analogy holds for other ad models.
      - kbenson 11y ago
        That only follows if you believe that viewing an advertisement is a discrete event with a discrete outcome, and has no outcome on future actions. Considering how much advertisement happens when you aren't in a position to immediately buy something, and how much research has gone into advertising and human perception, I don't believe that. Brand recognition works, at least in a lot of cases. But that doesn't even matter. I believe you agreed to a trade, in this case attention for content, and what justification do you have for not following through on your end? It's not within your rights to decide that your portion of the trade doesn't really benefit the other party so you will withhold it, if they have delivered on their portion. That is their decision to make.

by baddox 11y ago

kbenson 11y ago

> Blocking ads has nothing to do with redistributing someone else's content. You're right, it's like subscribing to a service that does it for you. > No, it's more like asking the newspaper publisher if you can have a version of their newspaper (for your own use) without ads, and them obliging. No, if they had an easy way to enforce your viewing of ads that scaled, I think it's fairly obvious they would (as many of the blocked ads are indeed an attempt at this, such as the timed overlay). It's more like the distributor responding with both marketing material and content with the understanding you are to view the marketing material along with the content, and you routing the marketing material to the trash from the post office (or somehow tricking the system into not sending you the marketing material). The expectation you are to view the marketing material is still there, even if you've somehow removed your ability to receive it.

baddox 11y ago
> You're right, it's like subscribing to a service that does it for you. You mean the blacklist services? Those are just a list of URL rules for your browser to reject. You still request the content from the web and the content provider obliges. > No, if they had an easy way to enforce your viewing of ads that scaled, I think it's fairly obvious they would Given that I have seen several websites that do this, I think you must be wrong. > It's more like the distributor responding with both marketing material and content with the understanding you are to view the marketing material along with the content, and you routing the marketing material to the trash from the post office Yes, it is like that, and I having no qualms with doing that. If I received a free magazine full of good content, along with a separate booklet of ads that are intended to be views with the content, I would have no problem reading the content and ignoring the ad booklet.
- kbenson 11y ago
  That's your choice, but I don't think it addresses whether the action is moral or not (unless you also ascertain that you refrain from all morally ambiguous actions), or whether it's bad manners (as the initiating comment termed it). I think there are a great many slightly immoral things that people do every day and justify by weighing how small the moral infraction is against the perceived benefit to themselves. The perceived benefit of not being annoyed by ads outweighs the slight immorality of circumventing those ads. It feels like a negligible harm to the other party, so we justify it to ourselves as victim-less, but it's not. The combined harm of all those that do so adds up the what is certainly a non-negligent level of harm in many cases. This is not unique to advertising, we fall prey to this reasoning in many ways, and in some ways we've seen that harm manifested in obvious ways that have then changed our behavior. Consider littering. The harm of a single person dropping a small amount of trash on the ground is negligent, the cost of most of a nation's population doing so is definitely not.
  - baddox 11y ago
    > It feels like a negligible harm to the other party, so we justify it to ourselves as victim-less, but it's not. The combined harm of all those that do so adds up the what is certainly a non-negligent level of harm in many cases. Think of it this way. Ad revenue is based on CPM, or cost per thousand ad views [0], which is itself based on the expected return of an ad view. The expected return obviously depends on how many people make purchases for the products advertised to them. So, using your same logic, you could conclude that refraining from buying a product that you see an advertisement for is causing harm to sites that are ad-supported. [0] Yes, most web advertising is not CPM. I'm simplifying for the sake of the analogy, and the same analogy holds for other ad models.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      That only follows if you believe that viewing an advertisement is a discrete event with a discrete outcome, and has no outcome on future actions. Considering how much advertisement happens when you aren't in a position to immediately buy something, and how much research has gone into advertising and human perception, I don't believe that. Brand recognition works, at least in a lot of cases. But that doesn't even matter. I believe you agreed to a trade, in this case attention for content, and what justification do you have for not following through on your end? It's not within your rights to decide that your portion of the trade doesn't really benefit the other party so you will withhold it, if they have delivered on their portion. That is their decision to make.