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by paulcole 2462 days ago
You’re getting something you value (video, article, etc.) in exchange for looking at ads instead of paying money. If you don’t want to look at ads, don’t look at the content. Don’t hide behind server requests and technicalities.
2 comments
bravoetch 2462 days ago
It would be fine in the 1995 version of the internet where a page served up content plus a banner ad. I might click, I might not. But now we're faced with privacy invasion, tracking, data-collection, TVs that output tones during ads that our phones pick up and report back to advertisers, pages that are slow and unreadable because the ads have taken over more real estate than the content. The list goes on, and it's not a trade we agreed to.

Anti-patterns designed to trick us into clicking, signing up, giving up more data, view another few seconds of ads. It never ends! So yeah, we block it. I don't feel sorry. If you don't think it's ethical then you're not paying attention to what's really going on. I used to go around installing Firefox for people before it was called that. Then adblockers, and now I go to people's houses and help them with a raspberry pi loaded with pi-hole. Fuck ads. Fuck that entire industry. And fuck everyone that works in that industry enabling them.

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danijelb 2462 days ago
Is it ok to skip ad pages in printed magazines? Or to switch a TV channel during commercials?
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paulcole 2462 days ago
Yes, it’s fine to skip ads in magazines or change the channel during commercials.

It’s not OK to get a robot that changes the channel for you or to have your magazines sent to a service who cuts the ads out and forwards them on to you.

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kelnos 2461 days ago
You're setting arbitrary restrictions based on some feel-good criterion you've developed for yourself.

The implication of your ethical argument was that avoiding ads causes the content creator to fail to get paid, and that's wrong.

There's no material difference between whether I avoid ads manually, or have software do it for me automatically. The end result is the same; the creator misses out on ad revenue. You can't cherry-pick the ad avoidance methods and say some are ethical and some are not when the supposed unethical act is depriving creators of payment.

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