[Klathmon]

Well, let's compare it, because that is a much better comparison!

Every time i bring it up i get downvoted, but why is blocking ads but still consuming the content okay? I'm genuinely curious.

To me it really feels like stealing. Like sneaking into a movie theater/concert/amusement park without paying, or like you said free-riding a subway/bus.

And when looked at through that lens, many of the excuses people make seem comical. (Ads make pages slow, they are ugly to look at, I don't agree with the business model). To me those excuses sound like saying "I don't think the movie is worth it, so i'm just not going to pay" while walking into the theater, or walking into a concert without paying because "waiting in line to get a ticket takes too long, so i just won't".

I'm hoping to have an actual conversation here and figure out why I feel so differently about this than many of the people on here do. What am I missing?

[tremon]

I'm not going to speak for anyone else on HN, but for me and most people around me, blocking ads while still consuming content is normal practice. Do you mute the TV, or leave the room during commercial breaks? Commercial TV is also funded by advertising, so if your position is that blocking ads is wrong, will you also argue that it is morally wrong to not watch TV commercials?

For me, blocking ads is a form of civil disobedience: I disagree with the predatory tactics of the ad industry, so I feel morally obligated not to support them. Arguing your case like it is just "consumers vs poor publishers" is ignoring the negative effects that a third party has on both the publishers and the consumers, and dismissing those arguments as "comical" might be part of the reason why it's so alien to you. It's the same as the case against music piracy: those arguments are also framed as "consumers vs poor artists" while completely ignoring the effects of the copyright-holding businesses.

Also, I don't think many people will tell you that they have a legal right to do so. The legal argument boils down to "there's no law against it", which is a different assertion than "there's an explicit law supporting me". Most people will instead tell you that they have a moral right to protect their computer or their life from the shady practices of advertisers.

For a more extreme viewpoint (but still one I can get behind), I'll gladly refer you to http://www.philosophersbeard.org/2015/07/advertisers-should-...

[Klathmon]

See, I don't think you are morally obligated to "view" any ads, just that you shouldn't block them.

I don't generally mute the tv during ads, but i will fast forward sometimes if i'm watching a recording. And while I don't think anyone should feel obligated to view ads, blocking them deprives the content creators of income, which means a bigger push for other forms of income which I feel are pretty much universally worse (paywalled content, native advertising, in-form advertising which is non-targeted and quickly out of date, etc...).

It's a bit of a fine line i guess. Blocking them outright is too far, but scrolling past them without looking is more than fine.

It's kind of weird, and i'll be the first to admit that it might be hypocritical to say that, but it's what i feel.

But as for a "solution" (but obviously not a perfect one), I've found Google Contributor to be a fantastic service. It's a system that basically lets you "bid" for advertising space the same way the ads do, and if you "win" the bid, you don't see an ad and a portion of your monthly fee goes to the site owner.

[douche]

The fact of the matter is, if I can wget a website, and run it through some regexps to strip whatever I damn well please out of it, it's really not justified to get high and mighty about me doing the same thing with a web browser.

So long as I have control of my internet connection, and am responsible for paying for the bandwidth that it downloads, I have the right to block malicious or simply unwanted domains and ips. No, I do not consent to download your 8MB uncompressed ad images, or your 35 MB auto-playing videos, terrible website.

[tremon]

See, I don't think you are morally obligated to "view" any ads, just that you shouldn't block them.

And if ads were purely static images, served from the same source as the article, you would have a valid point. But as it is, not blocking ads leaks possibly identifying information (e.g. [1]) to untrusted (by me) third parties.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/570534/

[ManlyBread]

>why is blocking ads but still consuming the content okay?

The alternative is to turn off the adblocker and leave your computer vulnerable to malware. It's an "either me or them" scenario, except it's caused by the irresponsibility of the other side. Why take the risk for someone else's profit? There's nothing positive to gain from this and you can also add performance issues and actual problems with finding information or navigating the website.

>many of the excuses people make seem comical.

>Ads make pages slow

I suppose it was a while since you had the pleasure to browse a modern website on an older device.

>they are ugly to look at

Why is this not a valid point in your opinion? I find it that ugly, cringeworthy ads make it harder to focus on the actual content of the website, especially if these are animated.

>I don't agree with the business model

And I have the very rare occasion to effectively demonstrate my disagreement in a way that affects the company, unlike TV or printed press where I can do nothing about the ads served.

[GrinningFool]

The difference from tv is that if you mute the ad, the provider still gets paid.

What I don't see there is an explanation of why "I don't like the ads/privacy risks/other and therefore will not use this site" is not an option under consideration?

As an ad block user I can't answer the question myself, but it's still a valid question.

[marcusarmstrong]

It's a stream of bytes sent to my computer. I have the right to look at as many or as few of them as I wish.

[Klathmon]

I understand that you have the capability of doing that, but why do you have the right to do that?

Why is it that you morally think it's okay to just consume content others have created without paying?

[mikestew]

Your mistake is in assuming that just because you form a construct around payments, rights, and obligations of the receiver of an HTTP response, everyone else will agree with you. I'm not doing anything "without paying" because there was no "paying" agreed to by me. Content sites and advertisers just made that up from whole cloth. As if they just show up on the playground and get to make the rules now.

The playground rules were simple: you prop a server that responds to HTTP requests, and in response you send an HTTP response that generally contains content. That's it, those are the rules. If someone wants to make money from this system, that's on them, not me. If they can't make money, well what did you expect from a playground where everything is freely given? Creating straw man "rules" around payment and moral obligations is futile. If the responder has issue with what I do with their response, perhaps sending content using HTTP is not the proper medium for what they want to accomplish.

In summary, just because you want to march in and monetize shit does not mean that any of the rest of us have any legal or moral obligation whatsoever to play along.

[coldpie]

I think publishers broke the moral contract first by making the distribution of malware and supporting Internet scams their primary business model. Once they broke the moral contract, we responded by developing ad blockers to protect ourselves from their maliciousness. I think if publishers stopped distributing malware, misleading ads, and Internet scams, then there would be far less demand for ad blockers. They created the problem, it's up to them to fix it.

Unlike a subway ride, it's impossible to tell whether a website has ads or not before you visit it. So I can't know whether I've violated the morals you're talking about until I already have done it.

I think publishers are welcome to create adblock-blockers, and I don't have any interest in working around them. I suspect it's not a feasible business model, but that's their problem, not mine.

[Klathmon]

> I think publishers are welcome to create adblock-blockers, and I don't have any interest in working around them.

And i'm fine with that as well. If you want to block ads that's cool with me, but don't expect to get the content as well.

[type0]

You see, there is a problem calling website pages "content", unless I know what that articles contains there is no way for me to know if it is of any value or not. Serving malicious ads and slowing down my internet speed just adds insult to the injury. I don't think it's okay to block adblockers, this is equivalent to discrimination IRL (e.g not letting someone into the restaurant because of their religion or skin color etc). If they want to get payed by the readers, there's always subscription model (lock it behind the paywall), don't discriminate me because of the software I'm using.

[coldpie]

> I don't think it's okay to block adblockers, this is equivalent to discrimination IRL (e.g not letting someone into the restaurant because of their religion or skin color etc).

Oh my god it's not even close I can't believe you said this.

[Klathmon]

If I start a news website, and I give you 2 options:

1. Pay $1 a month to view my content without ads

2. View ads

And you block ads without paying, i'm going to block you. You seem very pragmatic about what is best for you and your PC, well this is me being pragmatic about it as well.

If you block ads, and don't pay a subscription, you give me no value. It only costs me money to serve you content. So you aren't getting served content if you are going to be blocking ads.

It's not "discrimination" any more than a movie theater only letting people that pay in is.

[jalanb]

Because "The custom and practice of the web has always been that publicly accessible pages are served without payment"

The publishers are not offering content subject to a fee (which I am not paying). They are offering content for free, and also offering ads for free.

Accepting one of their free offers, and rejecting another of their free offers is not the same thing as "just consume ... without paying"

Some news sites do offer their content subject to a fee, and if they were interesting enough then I would pay that fee. But, because none of those sites (that I have encountered) are worth it, in comparision with the freely-served pages of the net, I choose not to pay those sites, and forego their content.

But if they are not explicitly charging a fee, then we fall back to the default custom and practice, which is that they offer content for free, and ads for free, and I have the right to accept as many, or few, of those offers as I like.

[Klathmon]

>Accepting one of their free offers, and rejecting another of their free offers is not the same thing as "just consume ... without paying"

There's a bit of mental gymnastics there, but I get what you are saying. I still don't agree, but I get it.

I just feel that if you asked, 99% of content creators would not see it like that, in the same way a store isn't "offering you a product, and the chance to pay for it".

[mikestew]

I just feel that if you asked, 99% of content creators would not see it like that

<insert obligatory quote which allegedly originated with Upton Sinclair> Of course they don't see it like that. Would you happen to have a less biased source? Say, just about anyone whose salary does not rely ads?

[Tunabrain]

In my country, there are a couple of newspapers distributed for free in train stations. These newspapers are purely financed with ads. Is it my moral obligation to read every ad in the newspaper to make sure they stay profitable?

I used to watch satellite TV when I was a kid. Most channels I watched were privately owned and purely financed with their (extremely long) ad breaks. Is it my moral obligation to sit through every single ad break?

My answer is no, that's ridiculous. If a company decides to offer content for free, it is not my obligation to make sure their business model stays lucrative. It shouldn't be anyone's obligation to consume every last bit of content someone offers only because it's given away for free.

[alanwatts]

>why do you have the right to do that?

A free human being should have the right to choose the information that goes into their mind, without that right, how can we make free decisions? If it's an all or nothing deal, then your information is clearly lacking intrinsic value, I can find that elsewhere.

>Why is it that you morally think it's okay to just consume content others have created without paying?

If I write a poem, make 7 billion copies, and mail it to everyone in the world, I'd be silly to think those 7 billion people are morally wrong for not paying me.

Monetary payments are based on the assumptions of scarcity and contractual agreements between two parties. Neither of these two things exist for public facing websites.

[marcusarmstrong]

If they wanted me to pay, they should charge for access. Other people don't have a moral right to execute code on my machine as a result of an HTTP request--including my browser.