5 ms·

"But wait, what about the moral dimension? The fact that if you block the ads, the sites lose their income?" What a ridiculous point. Sure the advertisers want

by joesmo 11y ago

"But wait, what about the moral dimension? The fact that if you block the ads, the sites lose their income?" What a ridiculous point. Sure the advertisers want to make this into a moral issue, but is it? No. It's not. Advertisers just feel entitled. They are not actually entitled to display their ads or make money. Even bringing up this point like it's a valid point for debate drags the quality of the article down. Advertisers not making money off people using ad blockers is NOT a moral issue. It's a failing of their business model. Nothing more and nothing less. Are we now going to say that they are too "insert adjective of choice here" to fail? Insanity!

hammerzeit 11y ago
Forget ethical questions, then, and let's talk economics. If you're not generating revenue for them, why should anybody who hopes to make money off of content choose to show you anything? What value do you represent to them? Why should they believe you?
- beerbajay 11y ago
  > why should anybody who hopes to make money off of content choose to show you anything? Nobody is forcing them to use advertizing to support their work/site. If they're not making money, they should change their business model.
- flavor8 11y ago
  I'll take "your broken business model is not my problem" for 200 points. There are plenty of places that I can buy content that I'm interested in. I'd far rather pay for quality content than put up with ads all over the web. As a plus side, paid for content might fix the journalism crisis. The death of content farms is not going to be a huge loss to the web ecosystem. Anything useful enough that people are willing to pay for it will survive.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    No, that's a fucking cop out. Answer the question: why do you feel entitled to view the content that others have worked to create for free? Why should we not expect the same of you? Why should we not expect you to work for free?
    - Nadya 11y ago
      > I'd far rather pay for quality content than put up with ads all over the web. Completely contradicts your claim of "for free". How do I know it's worth my money before I try it? When I'm purchasing a car, I can take it off the lot for a test drive. In the 90's, video games had demos (and now that demos are rare, I almost never buy video games I haven't played at a friends' first). When I purchase food - I know what I'm paying for. I know what I'm getting. Many purchases I make "guarantee my money back if I'm not totally satisfied with the product or service". When I purchase a journalistic article - I have no idea if the quality would be worth my money. I have no idea if it's going to be well written. Nowadays most articles I read contain factual errors, stretches of the truth, extreme political slants, author biases, and general muckery of something I would not pay for. But I didn't know that it was something so bad I would use to wipe my ass instead of reading it until after I had already read it. There are websites I use that are 100% free and donation-only supported. They not only meet but exceed their monthly donation goals consistently. These are sites where the users give a damn whether the server is still online next month or not. The website has been online for the past 5 years and there has never been financial troubles. Perhaps instead of using an "ad-based" business model websites should use a "value-based" business model. Where, if the website is valuable enough to the users, the users will choose to sustain it out of their own desire to continue to use the site. If your journalistic site doesn't offer any additional value to users. You sink - and nobody would care. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if the entire Gawker media conglomerate crashed and burned and had to shut down. I wouldn't care at all - and you wouldn't see me donating money to keep it online - because they provide no value to me.
    - flavor8 11y ago
      It's not a fucking cop out. You make your content available on the web without a paywall, on the assumption that my client will serve ads. Well, guess what, it doesn't. At no point did you contract with me to require me to view ads. Your terms of service (which you didn't even require me to agree to) did not require that I don't block ads. Your business model is based on the assumption that I will gladly view ads. I won't. Hundreds of millions of others won't. Your business model is broken. The market is clearly not supporting the amount of content that is available. Don't try to play the ethics card; the advertising industry is as sleazy as they come. If your content is valuable enough, put up a paywall and people will pay for it.
hammerzeit 11y ago
Forget ethical questions, then, and let's talk economics. If you're not generating revenue for them, why should anybody who hopes to make money off of content choose to show you anything? What value do you represent to them? Why should they believe you?
s73v3r 11y ago
Apparently just like you feel entitled to enjoy the content others have made for free.
- thatswrong0 11y ago
  When a webpage is served to you, you are under no obligation to not modify that webpage in any way. They gave the bytes to you for free. You can do whatever you want to them once you get them. If my modification of that content is depriving them of income, then that's a flaw in their business model, not my ethics.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    No, it's entirely a violation of your ethics. You are explicitly modifying them for the express purpose of denying them income.
    - kinghajj 11y ago
      > No, it's entirely a violation of your ethics. Your ethics, perhaps. > express purpose of denying them income. No, the "express purpose" is to deny the creator's intent for how to interpret the markup, which has a side effect of denying content. Saying that the "express purpose" is to deny content isn't a fair characterization.
- joesmo 11y ago
  I see all you can do is stoop to calling names, but I'll give you a proper reply regardless of the fact that you don't deserve one. No, it's the artists who feel entitled to make money off their work, work that oftentimes is quite worthless or poor. Others are not required to offer content for free and I don't feel entitled to it. If it's there for free, maybe I'll consume it, maybe not. It's only the content creators who think their consumers feel entitled to free content because they're too stupid to come up with better business models to market their content. As a writer, musician, and artist, I offer a lot of my content for free with no ads and have no problem with that. I actually enjoy creating it and don't do it for the ad revenue. If other content creators want to charge for their content or wrap it up in ads, it's up to them to figure out a business model that works for their purpose. Their failing to do so does in no way reflect a failing in anyone's morality except possibly theirs. tl;dr: If my ad-blocking is hurting these content creators so much, they should figure out a way to deliver ads that can't be blocked and stop calling the consumers names like "entitled" (because that's another reason the consumers don't want to pay for that mediocre two-paragraph piece surrounded by 10 megs of ads). Period.

by joesmo 11y ago

hammerzeit 11y ago

Forget ethical questions, then, and let's talk economics. If you're not generating revenue for them, why should anybody who hopes to make money off of content choose to show you anything? What value do you represent to them? Why should they believe you?

beerbajay 11y ago
> why should anybody who hopes to make money off of content choose to show you anything? Nobody is forcing them to use advertizing to support their work/site. If they're not making money, they should change their business model.
flavor8 11y ago
I'll take "your broken business model is not my problem" for 200 points. There are plenty of places that I can buy content that I'm interested in. I'd far rather pay for quality content than put up with ads all over the web. As a plus side, paid for content might fix the journalism crisis. The death of content farms is not going to be a huge loss to the web ecosystem. Anything useful enough that people are willing to pay for it will survive.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  No, that's a fucking cop out. Answer the question: why do you feel entitled to view the content that others have worked to create for free? Why should we not expect the same of you? Why should we not expect you to work for free?
  - Nadya 11y ago
    > I'd far rather pay for quality content than put up with ads all over the web. Completely contradicts your claim of "for free". How do I know it's worth my money before I try it? When I'm purchasing a car, I can take it off the lot for a test drive. In the 90's, video games had demos (and now that demos are rare, I almost never buy video games I haven't played at a friends' first). When I purchase food - I know what I'm paying for. I know what I'm getting. Many purchases I make "guarantee my money back if I'm not totally satisfied with the product or service". When I purchase a journalistic article - I have no idea if the quality would be worth my money. I have no idea if it's going to be well written. Nowadays most articles I read contain factual errors, stretches of the truth, extreme political slants, author biases, and general muckery of something I would not pay for. But I didn't know that it was something so bad I would use to wipe my ass instead of reading it until after I had already read it. There are websites I use that are 100% free and donation-only supported. They not only meet but exceed their monthly donation goals consistently. These are sites where the users give a damn whether the server is still online next month or not. The website has been online for the past 5 years and there has never been financial troubles. Perhaps instead of using an "ad-based" business model websites should use a "value-based" business model. Where, if the website is valuable enough to the users, the users will choose to sustain it out of their own desire to continue to use the site. If your journalistic site doesn't offer any additional value to users. You sink - and nobody would care. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if the entire Gawker media conglomerate crashed and burned and had to shut down. I wouldn't care at all - and you wouldn't see me donating money to keep it online - because they provide no value to me.
  - flavor8 11y ago
    It's not a fucking cop out. You make your content available on the web without a paywall, on the assumption that my client will serve ads. Well, guess what, it doesn't. At no point did you contract with me to require me to view ads. Your terms of service (which you didn't even require me to agree to) did not require that I don't block ads. Your business model is based on the assumption that I will gladly view ads. I won't. Hundreds of millions of others won't. Your business model is broken. The market is clearly not supporting the amount of content that is available. Don't try to play the ethics card; the advertising industry is as sleazy as they come. If your content is valuable enough, put up a paywall and people will pay for it.

hammerzeit 11y ago

s73v3r 11y ago

Apparently just like you feel entitled to enjoy the content others have made for free.

thatswrong0 11y ago
When a webpage is served to you, you are under no obligation to not modify that webpage in any way. They gave the bytes to you for free. You can do whatever you want to them once you get them. If my modification of that content is depriving them of income, then that's a flaw in their business model, not my ethics.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  No, it's entirely a violation of your ethics. You are explicitly modifying them for the express purpose of denying them income.
  - kinghajj 11y ago
    > No, it's entirely a violation of your ethics. Your ethics, perhaps. > express purpose of denying them income. No, the "express purpose" is to deny the creator's intent for how to interpret the markup, which has a side effect of denying content. Saying that the "express purpose" is to deny content isn't a fair characterization.
joesmo 11y ago
I see all you can do is stoop to calling names, but I'll give you a proper reply regardless of the fact that you don't deserve one. No, it's the artists who feel entitled to make money off their work, work that oftentimes is quite worthless or poor. Others are not required to offer content for free and I don't feel entitled to it. If it's there for free, maybe I'll consume it, maybe not. It's only the content creators who think their consumers feel entitled to free content because they're too stupid to come up with better business models to market their content. As a writer, musician, and artist, I offer a lot of my content for free with no ads and have no problem with that. I actually enjoy creating it and don't do it for the ad revenue. If other content creators want to charge for their content or wrap it up in ads, it's up to them to figure out a business model that works for their purpose. Their failing to do so does in no way reflect a failing in anyone's morality except possibly theirs. tl;dr: If my ad-blocking is hurting these content creators so much, they should figure out a way to deliver ads that can't be blocked and stop calling the consumers names like "entitled" (because that's another reason the consumers don't want to pay for that mediocre two-paragraph piece surrounded by 10 megs of ads). Period.