[rosser]

I'm not a party to the contract between the advertiser and the content provider. In principle, I don't necessarily even have an expectation that a given content provider uses advertising revenue to support the provision of their content — they may use a subscription-based revenue model, and offer some number of "free" page views per day/week/month/whatever, as a teaser to encourage new subscriptions. They may just have stupendously deep pockets and like providing that content out of the goodness of their hearts.

Whatever; doesn't matter.

To make the leap from "I chose to view that page" to "I chose to view the ads on that page" is specious and unsupported, and I'm under no obligation whatsoever to enter into an agreement between two other parties on the basis that they happen to have a standing agreement.

To suggest otherwise is tantamount to suggesting that because I chose to walk down a specific street at a specific time, I somehow also chose to see a specific dude taking a specific dump.

I can promise you, I didn't. Just as with ads on the web, however, my consent is apparently not a factor in this equation.

(Why, yes, I do live in San Francisco. How ever did you guess?)

EDIT: And, yes, before you judge or jump to conclusions: I do have paid, auto-renewing subscriptions on subscription-model websites, and I use ad and tracker blocking plugins. It's not my fault that some of the sites I view have chosen (what I think are) shitty revenue models.

[mirimir]

As "AdblockingAndMorality" notes, ads are also potentially dangerous content. Let's say that you're a small business, and CryptoLocker nukes everything, including your backups. Would the content provider be liable? How about the ad distributor? Why shouldn't they, if you've been given no opportunity to opt out?

[vacri]

> I'm not a party to the contract between the advertiser and the content provider. > ... an agreement between two other parties

It's irrelevant what the behind-the-scenes relations are. The party you are engaging is providing the webpage with all it's content; that some of it is outsourced doesn't matter. Using your rationale, you should also be blocking any work done by freelance journalists.

If a company outsources it's billing, does this now mean that you can ethically access their services for free? After all, if a different company is the one posting you the bill, "I didn't agree to anything with them", so you don't need to pay up. It doesn't work that way. If you've ever been chased by a debt collection agency, you'll know that argument is no defence.

Perhaps walk into a diner and have a big meal. Then refuse to pay because you don't have an existing contract with any of the point-of-sale EFT providers or the manufacturer of the cash register. Those are contracts that the diner has with other parties and you have not consented to a contract with them, so you are within your rights to ignore them.

> I somehow also chose to see a specific dude taking a specific dump.

If you know a street is extremely likely to have a dude take a dump, then yes, choosing to walk down that street is accepting that you're also going to see a dude taking a dump.

Regarding your edit, I really don't care. I just think that talking about blocking ads as some sort of morally pure action is nonsense. It's not. You're consuming the content without the full bundle that the content provider put together - if you want to see the article, you're expected to see the ads along with it. I'm not saying that you shouldn't block ads, I'm just saying that if you do, don't pretend like it's actually an ethical action. If you want to be ethical, then don't use the site at all.

[rosser]

Using your rationale, you should also be blocking any work done by freelance journalists.

No, using that rationale, I should be blocking any work done by anyone I choose to block.

EDIT: As far as the "ethics" of ad-blocking, I'm not the one arguing ad-blocking is an ethical position. For me, it's an aesthetic position (ads are ugly), and — as The Fine Article does point out — one of choosing to have my browsing habits remain untouched, unmolested, and unanalyzed and re-sold by the demonstrably unclean hands the advertisers are grabbing at me with.

I guess you can call that an ethical position if you want, but it's not about what's right or wrong in my behavior, so my ethics are pretty much moot.

[vacri]

No, using that rationale, I should be blocking any work done by anyone I choose to block

You were complaining above that you were presented with content from a third party that you hadn't consented to, and didn't have a contract with.

I'm not the one arguing ad-blocking is an ethical position.

If you're not arguing about the ethics of it, why have you been talking about consent and the structure of contracts between parties? Nothing in your first, largest comment has anything to do with aesthetics, it's all about consent. Why, in the same paragraph as this statement, do you demean advertisers quite heavily about issues other than appearance? (deservedly or otherwise)

I'm still interested to hear your opinion on walking out on a bill because you don't have your own contract with the third-party EFT vendors.

[rosser]

I didn't say there weren't ethical arguments to be made around ad blocking. In fact, I offered what I thought was a pretty clear position on what I found to be the most compelling issue in that vein. I didn't lead with that argument in my original reply to you because it wasn't on point; I was replying to your specific language about contracts with an argument about my duty to honor a contract I wasn't a party to.

As for your question about skipping out on my restaurant tab because I don't have a contract with that restaurant's EFT vendor, I have two thoughts:

1. It's disanalogous, and so irrelevant. If some restaurants give away their food, some restaurants charge a monthly fee and let you eat as much as you want, and some charge per plate, and I don't know which is which before entering — before ordering, even — your question might be cogent.

As it stands, however, it's pretty much universal that if you walk into a restaurant, you'll be paying for your meal. So, I guess, to move that analogy to websites, if every website always had ads, and I was making an argument about blocking them on the basis that "I didn't know I'd be seeing an ad", I'd be full of shit.

But that's clearly not the world we live in, is it? So, moot.

2. Pursuant to my point above, that we live in a world where one always (or so close to always as to be practically indistinguishable) pays for one's meals at a restaurant: if Joe's Diner only accepts payment via Whiz-Bang EFT, Inc. and I don't have the means to transact with Whiz-Bang EFT, Inc. (say, I only have cash, or I don't have their app installed on my employer-provided phone — which is the only phone I'm carrying — and don't have rights to install new apps on that phone [1], or whatever), then it's not my fault if I can't pay Joe's Diner for my meal, is it?

My contract isn't with Whiz-Bang, else I'd already have a means of transacting with them, but I do have an (implicit) contract with Joe's to pay them for the food I ask them to serve me — again, we're talking about a world where one pays for one's meals, on a per-meal basis. If Joe's imposes an insurmountable obstacle to my fulfilling my contractual obligation, they're the ones who've voided that contract, not me.

Again, however, this is disanalogous to ads and websites, so I don't think it's terribly relevant. I'm just answering the question you specifically re-asked.

[1] Yes, that's unlikely to the point of absurdity, but so is this entire argument.

EDIT: formatting, phrasing, and clarification.

[vacri]

Sorry, was pulled away yesterday.

In short, I find it really odd that you take a "that's the way the world is" with the diner, but not with website advertising. You talk of consent and contracts as if website advertising is some kind of weird outlier that you hardly ever come across.

Just as you don't have a contract with the EFT vendor, neither do you have a contract with the web ad vendor. But the product is a whole - you're supposed to get one without the other. Blocking web ads is like skipping out on paying the bill at a diner. The individual damage is much less, and trivial, but ethically it's the same thing.

I do it. It's a selfish thing - I value my convenience more than I value the trivial fraction of a cent it costs the content provider. My problem is with people who will torture philosophy to try and make it sound like they're fighting a morally pure fight by blocking ads. It's not ethical, but it's not a great sin either. Just admit it's a selfish action and stop torturing the philosophy around consent and contracts. This kind of debate tactic is like the libertarian who redefines 'violence' to include receiving a letter from the tax department.

If you want to be ethical and you feel violated by ads, simply don't patronise the site. I don't care about blocking ads, but I do care that people describe it as some sort of morally clean action rather than a selfish convenience.

[cdcarter]

Actually, I don't think it's a fair point to say that "I chose to view the ads on that page" is specious and unsupported at all. Those ads are part of the markup and makeup of that page.

[rosser]

But that's exactly my point: without loading an arbitrary page, I can't know whether or not there are ads embedded in its markup.

If a page's headers could somehow tell me, "Hey! This page has ads! Do you still want to load it?", and I choose to continue viewing the page, then I've consented.

Absent that kind of exchange, I am in principle being involuntarily subject to unwanted content.

[vacri]

The same is true of every element on the page, from the menu system to the related articles box. Shall we have headers for every single element on a page?

[rosser]

Navigation elements are an expected, and rather essential part of a site's functionality.

Ads aren't — as ad-blocking software perfectly demonstrates: the day a site legitimately doesn't work (in the sense of being unnavigable, or somehow otherwise unable to be utilized in the way its creators intended, irrespective of its revenue model) because advertising content — which someone has chosen to include in order to monetize my eyeballs — doesn't load, then maybe you'll have an argument.

It's as simple as this: ads, if they're on a page, aren't what induced me to view that page. If the stuff that does draw me to a given page doesn't work, that's a problem. If ads don't load, my (personal) experience of the page is, in fact, improved. How exactly is that a problem, again?

[vacri]

Navigation elements beyond a spacebar and hyperlinks aren't essential. And probably PageUp. From websites of the 90's to today's product pages, there are plenty of websites that only require a spacebar and links to get around - no fancy dropdown menus or related article boxes.

Example, I've just been looking at https://www.consul.io/ - no menus, no special boxes. All you need is a spacebar to navigate the page, and you click on links to go to other pages. It's perfectly workable - fancy geegaws are not essential to navigate the site. Just like not all sites have ads, neither to all sites have drop-down menus and similar.

Perhaps I should have used HN as the example - it's also nothing but space/pageup and links.