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...
"Akshually there's no law saying I need to behave morally" feels like an adroit sidestepping of the problems here.