No. The agreement is that my browser will issue HTTP requests, their web server will return some HTML. There's a legal requirement that neither payload is intended to cause harm, but the agreement - unless I've signed a contract - does not go further than that.
If someone wants to feed ads into that content, that's their right. If I want to change the way that content displays, that's my right.
by opening the website, that data HAS left the origin server and is sent to my browser. What i do with that data is up to me.
i choose to ignore half of it so be it. Is there a mandate that i have to "hold it the right way only" like apple famously did with their antennagate?
This is the best argument. If they send me an exploit it isn’t expected for me to run it blindly because of some unwritten contract, right? Once the payload is sent to me it is my right to execute it as I wish. That is the unwritten contract.
> the agreement - unless I've signed a contract - does not go further than that
I don't think they were saying there was a legal agreement, just a moral and social one.
It's like taking all the eggs from an honesty box outside someone's house - you didn't sign anything saying you wouldn't, but it's pretty clear you're in the wrong.
It’s interesting that moral and social burden is somehow put onto people that don’t want to be tracked/shadow profiled/spied on, and NOT on the companies that do tracking/spying.
I don't know what code their sites will send my browser until they send it. But I do know that my browser tells them not to track me in its initial request, so they are free to send me away and not let me "in the door".
But they don't, they let me in despite me being very clear that I am entering on the condition that they don't track me, so here we are. They don't get to pull the surprised-face card when I then proceed to not let them track me.
Adjacent to that, I think a "I'm not going to display your ads" or bluntly "don't show me ads" header would make perfect sense and yet I'm quite sure that webmasters would treat it the exact same way that they've treated do-not-track.
I am sorry, was it you that wrote "I don't think they were saying there was a legal agreement, just a moral and social one. It's like taking all the eggs from an honesty box outside someone's house - you didn't sign anything saying you wouldn't, but it's pretty clear you're in the wrong."? If that’s not putting moral and social burden onto tracking blockers, I don’t know what is.
Well I think it is - they're offering something with an understanding.
Yes the understanding isn't legally enforced, but socially that's what they're expecting.
Since you know that's what they're expecting (unless you're an idiot), the more moral thing to do is to respect that and not engage with them if you don't agree, rather than continuing to take while knowing that it's not what they wanted.
No, nice try I guess but this is wrong in several ways.
Morals are not defined by capitulating to the wishes of others. If it was, the moral thing for advertisers to do would be to not try to show people ads who don’t wish to view them but do wish to consume content. Your argument here falls apart the second you consider any symmetry.
Furthermore, there are decades of history of advertisers being perfectly aware that most people would prefer not to see the ads, given a choice. They do not, in fact, expect people to just watch the ads. As evidence of this fact, they have come up with dozens and dozens of legal and technical mechanisms to force people to view their ads despite their preferences.
Morals are not defined by respecting the wishes of other people either. You’re right to pivot to common expectations, that’s closer, but when you examine the actual expectations of both the public and the advertisers, you find that it roundly undermines your choice of framing here.
Restaurants are a false analogy. There is an explicit agreement known in advance by both parties, a legal contract with a restaurant when you order, and leaving without paying is a crime. There is no such expectation with ads.
This is cringey and goofy. It’s not a moral issue, you’re really stretching. Even if it was a moral issue, the global known public expectation of ads is that they’re sometimes tolerated and on the whole not preferred. You’re choosing to prioritize the viewpoint of advertisers over respecting the wishes of the public, while if you look at it from the public’s perspective, ads have never been the “moral” choice.
Your argument, of course, is also wearing blinders to the many ways that ads can be actually immoral, for example as a soft bait-and-switch, by offering one thing to entice while delivering something else with an agenda, and the ways ads are often directly immoral by using misleading or untrue information, selling goods and services that are overall harmful to the public, from excessive sugar to payday loans to expensive pharmaceuticals to politics.
> Morals are not defined by respecting the wishes of other people either.
I think they are - it's moral to respect other people's reasonable wishes, or not interact with them if you're not able to respect them.
If I know someone expects that I'll bring a bottle of wine to their party, I should either do that, or I should decline to come to the party. If I know that's what they were expecting and I turn up empty handed and eat all their party food then I'm just a bad person even if no laws were broken.
'Nah nah nah no laws broken, agreement was never written down, no money changed hands' isn't a kind way to interact with people.
You’re moving the goal posts now. The actual expectation of the public today is that blocking ads is okay, just like muting the TV or fast-forwarding a video is okay. The actual expectation of the advertisers is also that people don’t want to watch ads, if they have a choice. They have acknowledged this directly in many ways. So the common expectation is that people prefer to not watch ads, therefore by your logic the only moral choice is to not try to show ads to people.
> therefore by your logic the only moral choice is to not try to show ads to people
No I wouldn't agree with that. I think it's moral to show adverts, but not to be subversive about it, and I think it's moral to offer a way to turn them off such as paid plans, which I often use.
This isn’t about what you think, your opinion does not define what’s moral. Morality is defined by what the public as a whole agrees with. Today, the public is okay with blocking ads. The public is also okay with showing ads and paid plans too. Therefore, again, this is not a moral issue. But if it was, both the common (public and advertisers) and public expectations alone demonstrate that the less moral choice is to try to show ads to people against their will when they’re consuming content unrelated to the ads. The advertisers have always known this and they are free to not pay for ads and not support the content, but they choose to because ads still work well enough, for better or worse, despite ad-blocking behaviors among people who care enough.
> This isn’t about what you think, your opinion does not define what’s moral.
Err that's exactly what my comment was about. I was sharing my opinion on what I think is moral. If you don't want to hear my opinion on it why are you reading the thread?
I'm not threatening to codify this into law and enforce it on others if that's what you were worried about lol!
The restaurant analogy works. Blocking web ads is not like ignoring a billboard, or turning away from TV ads. When you go to an ad-supported web site, your individual request actually costs money to serve. You are incrementally increasing their costs while denying them the corresponding income. You are making a decision to continue increasing those costs for your own benefit.
There's a reasonable argument to be made that the first request is a gimme. As soon as you see that there are ads being blocked, however, the moral thing to do would be to close the browser and go elsewhere.
Billboards and TV ads cost money too, generally speaking far more money per ad than web ads. The idea that they’re somehow different from website ads is wrong.
> As soon as you see that there are ads being blocked, however, the moral thing to do would be to close the browser and go elsewhere.
False, because that’s not the actual public expectation today. The common expectation that would define what is moral in this situation is that blocking is reasonable because ads are intrusive and annoying and often get in the way of the reason I’m on the site. I’d be fine with saying it’s “nice” and it’s “supporting” the site to not block the ad, but hard disagree that blocking is immoral, that’s just hyperbole.
That’s not really the advertiser’s wish either, they don’t want the result to be less traffic, they just want you to watch the ad. So your suggestion isn’t actually respecting their wishes.
> Since you know that's what they're expecting (unless you're an idiot), the more moral thing to do is to respect that and not engage with them if you don't agree
If you think the current state of online advertising as a business model is actively immoral, as I do, then I'd argue violating that expectation is at least morally neutral if not actually the moral thing to do.
If the goal is to end online advertising as a business model, then not visiting the site is either morally equivalent (no change) or morally worse (does not harm the business) to visiting it with an ad blocker (does harm the business).
No that doesn't make any sense - the whole point of a sample is to give to people who don't already have an intent to purchase. That's what the company wants to do and their offer to you.
I don't think these replies are the clever 'gotchas' that you think they are.
Certainly this doesn't hold up without an explanation and you shouldn't expect the reader to provide that for themselves.
If that sounds wrong to you, I'd invite you to put your thoughts into words.
Samples are funded by the expectation that some will follow through with a purchase and justify the free distribution of those samples.
Websites with ads are funded by the expectation that some will click through, make a purchase, and justify the free distribution of those bits.
If you eat samples with no intent of making a purchase, you are subverting FoodCo's expectation that samples will lead to sales. You are making their business model unsustainable.
Why do you think the free taking of bits (which cost much less to serve, and is much less tangible) is less justified than the free taking of food samples? In both cases it subverts the business model expectations of the party offering the free stuff.
I think individuals are not obligated to support the business models of companies that give them free stuff in hopes it will make them money - so have no moral concerns with either case.
Their understanding is entirely in their own mind. I, and a very large percentage of internet users, reject it. Content publishers might want this social contract to exist, but it does not.
I personally don't find ad-supported content objectionable. But it's still my browser running on my computer and I'll do what I like with it.
How far do you take this point? Because the social expectation is not just that you allow the ads to be served, but that you read/watch them and that they increase the likelihood of you buying the products/services being advertised. Is it immoral for me to ignore the ads that I allow them to display on my computer? And if not, what is the difference apart from the effort I'm putting in?
I think the normal expectation would be that the advertiser pays for the ads being shown together with the content you're really interested in, and it's the advertisers' problem if the ads produce any value for them.
This feels like an arbitrary line to me. The host expects the ads to be rendered, and that's my problem. The advertiser expects their ads to be viewed, but that's their problem. What's the distinction?
Is it that I'm only in an implicit social contract with the person serving the content I want? Then it would be morally fine for me to block ads as long as I trick advertisers into thinking I didn't- the host only cares about whether they get paid. And what about on YouTube or Instagram, where the advertiser is the host? Google expects me to view their ads, not just render them, and I'm definitely in a social contract with them.
Or is it that they are allowed to stake a moral claim on the content of my browser, but not on my attention? Then I'd be allowed to block full-screen ads that force me to find an X, or autoplaying ads with sound, as they are forcing me to give them something they have no right to. And if I had an attention deficit disorder or a shopping addiction, all ads would be in that category. Even without such things, every ad accesses my attention without my consent, even if it's just the attention required to ignore them.
I disagree. There are forms of adverts that my browser extensions will not block - simple images for example. It’s not my fault that sites choose not to use these any more, and instead use a model that is, in my view, an unacceptable security risk.
It's morally acceptable to block intrusive ads, in order to force advertisers to adopt better practices. Isn't that the way of the free market? To vote with your wallet, I mean, with your eyeballs?
The ultimate purpose of ads is getting money from us, why can't we have a say about how the request is presented to us? Ads are not a privilege or a right, they're beggars posted at every corner of the Internet.
> It's morally acceptable to block intrusive ads, in order to force advertisers to adopt better practices. Isn't that the way of the free market? To vote with your wallet, I mean, with your eyeballs?
By not consuming intrusive ads, and by not buying products promoted with unethical practices.
You can't possibly defend the current state of private spying and surveillance, it's dystopian. The data collected is sold (directly or indirectly) to bad actors, and is ripe for abuse. You can't just say "deal with it or GTFO", ad blocking is the only recourse we as consumers have to voice our opinion.
I don’t view it as my role as a consumer to prejudge the business model of the websites I visit. If a website does not want my view, they can block me or use a paywall. That’s fine.
But a website could cover the marginal cost of serving me content with simple image adverts, sponsored content, donation mechanism, subscription or otherwise. They may decide that having X% of viewers block ads is a ‘cost of business’ and is worth it to increase viewership.
Modelling the situation as ‘honest’ to accept ads and ‘dishonest’ to block them may undermine the chosen business model of the site, and not visiting again models the monetisation strategy as static, which it is not.
Not the person you're replying to, but my take is that the website is giving away information for free on an open protocol without requiring a login and I'm just choosing which parts of it I want to download. I see no moral implications to that other than an implied "thank you for providing that information or service".
The parts I choose not to download are designed to psychologically manipulate me into buying something I likely don't want, they run code on my system I don't care for them to run, and they grab what data they can in order to profile me. I don't feel like I'm the one that should be feeling shame here.
If the advertising companies showed any kind of restraint and respect, maybe I'd feel differently. From what I've seen, it's been getting progressively worse since the "punch the monkey" days of the web.
If the person or entity hosting the content can't support the creation and hosting of their website without trying to manipulate me and track me and without opening my system up to potential malware, then good riddance, I guess. If all they did was show ads as text or static images without any of the tracking nonsense (basically the old print magazine or newspaper model), then I wouldn't care that much. But they don't, so I do.
And if we really want to speak about morals there is an unacknowledged moral issue here in that most websites using ads are hooked up to someone else's ad network and do not vet them for accuracy or safety. The website owner has seemingly no responsibility for the portal they opened to shove someone else's content into my face.
Until such time I can demand payment for damages when that negligently opened portal serves the latest zero day or scams my family or employees and tracks me all over the web while violating my privacy, I am forced to conclude the average webmaster wants the benefit without the responsibility. And with that, the blocker stays on, with a clear conscience and an eye to safety. Your business model that demands I sacrifice safety and privacy so you can make a few pennies is not my fucking problem.
First party ads are an entire different issue and do not have any of these concerns. They are also very rare.
Even if all ads were well-behaved and didn't carry more risk of infection than licking BART seats, I'd still block them. The entire industry is evil, in that their whole reason to exist is manipulating people into acting against their own interests.
By reading this comment, you have tacitly agreed to pay me 30 cents. If you do not do so then you are stymying my income. You now have a moral imperative to financially support the creation of this comment and more like it. If you do not want to give me 30 cents then you should never have read this comment.
About as much of a moral quandary as changing TV channels temporarily when an ad comes on. Or more directly, using a TiVo approach to skip ads altogether. Or changing the radio station during a block of ads. Or skipping past an ad segment in a podcast. Or... not looking up at a billboard when I'm driving on a freeway that raises money from billboards.
Or more aptly, switching and/or muting the tab when an ad comes on a Twitch stream.
The vast majority of modern day ads are a cancer on society that are engineered to maximize the insecurities and desires of the viewer. They try to make you feel as unhappy as possible so you'll make a purchase to soothe those negative feelings.
If there was a moral ad network, I might take pause, but the industry has leaned into the rottenness and embraced creepy surveillance and thought manipulation.
I don't think advertising is moral. I don't feel even the slightest ounce of responsibility to consume advertisements. Do you really feel this way or just trying to have a debate?
> you really see no moral quandary in stymying their income?
Nope. Find another business model or go bankrupt. If you send me ads, I'll delete them. No exceptions. I don't have to justify myself either, "I don't want to see ads" is more than a good enough reason.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
If a person is standing in public space and talking, while at the same time having a bunch of advertisement signs around him, and you had the technology (say, AR glasses) to block out said advertisements from your view, would you consider it immoral to block out the advertisements, while listening to what the person is saying?
I have normal sunglasses that you clip on your normal glasses. When I wear them, all those vertical LCD adverticement screens are black to me. Adblocking glasses are very nice!
Tip to ad companies, don't turn the displays 90 degrees, they are meant to be used in landscape mode for a reason...
If someone wants to feed ads into that content, that's their right. If I want to change the way that content displays, that's my right.