As naive as this may make me sound, I think this attitude is hurting society. The idea that everyone is and should be trying to screw everyone else out of as much pleasure and profit as legal is, in my opinion, detrimental to society.
When we stop doing things that don't negatively affect us much and help others, we've lost the benefits of altruism that helped our species evolve beyond the rest.
Perhaps a better way to phrase it: you should expect your customers to act in accordance with their best interests (as they understand them.) They aren't trying to "screw" you so much as trying to get the best value they can. Not viewing annoying ads is of value to people, which is why they go to the trouble of running adblock or paying for ad-free premium pages.
It's up to content providers to figure out how to get paid. Guilt-tripping readers into viewing ads is one approach; running skeezy ads is another; paywalls or premium content is another; merchandising yet another. Each of those affects the value your readers get from your site. Given that, how can content providers best align their interest (getting paid) with their readers' interests (getting good content cheap/free)?
I submit that, if sites ran carefully-vetted ads that were of legitimate interest to their readers, were not annoying, and did not compromise user privacy, far fewer of us would use adblock.
As many people love to point out, it's companies' fiduciary duty to screw people, impersonally, as much as possible. The distance and amenability to machine automation that technology adds makes it easier for customers to treat companies in a similar way.
What if the technology wasn't visible, wasn't in browsers, but instead was in our heads? What if we had a perfect ability to selectively filter out what we see and not let it affect us consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously? What if our awarenesses were so under our control that advertising could be scientifically proven to be useless?
Would this ability to focus our minds, free ourselves from distractions and pay deliberate attention only to what we willed, be morally or ethically wrong?
While I agree with the sentiment, that's a whole heck of a love of evolution to work against. Nature (think of life on the Serengeti) is all about screwing over one creature for the benefit of another.
This is a little bit silly. By not watching ads, I am screwing somebody? How about by watching ads I screw the people who paid for the ads, as there is no way those ads would affect me in a positive way? I don't see how one is worse than the other. If a web site asks people who hate ads to watch ads, they are screwing the people who pay for the ads. They should be thankful for ad blockers, because at least they prevent me from getting negative emotions towards the advertised stuff.
If I block ads, the site should have a higher conversion rate, so they should be able to ask for more money for the ad impressions.
I'm not sure it's a particularly new development. People have been acting in their own self-interest for time immemorial.
(And indeed economic models which work on the basis of enlightened self interest have been the most successful and delivered the most good to their adherents).
Your argument, while emotional, leads nowhere. So not viewing ads hurts society; why should I care whether or not I hurt society? Now we are right back where we started.
Realize that that idea is capitalism* or at least the inevitable side-effect of capitalism. And that the altrusim idea is socialism.
* as practiced in real life not some wanker's theoretical definition.
PS it was probably selfishness and greed (combined with tribal "us vs them" so that (generally) you'll steal from the fuckers in next valley over but not your children) that helped our species destroy and/or exceed our competition.
It's painful to see so many intelligent people unable or unwilling to analyze the effects their actions cause. If you block ads on sites you enjoy without communicating with the producers of that site, you are lowering the probability that sites you enjoy will continue to be produced. There are several ways to mitigate this effect if you don't like ads:
1) Pay for a subscription.
2) If no subscription is offered, ask for one to be offered.
3) If you'd simply like less offensive ads, ask for less offensive ads.
Taking actions that in sum lower the probability of things you like being produced in the future is incredibly stupid.
"The internet is also a wonderful thing. FIRST a person or company puts a lot of information somewhere that everyone can read it effortlessly for free, and THEN they sometimes expect me to look at their ads. And I can simply choose not to."
Ars Technica doesn't expect you to look at their ads. They expect you to render their ads or pay for a subscription. If you choose to do neither of those, you are a parasite.
Do you realize, that not blocking the ads but simply ignoring them just pushes "the hurt" down the chain? In this debate let's not forget the whole point of advertising—to sell some product. So someone pays money for ads, some site gets them, maybe for clicks, maybe for just views. The point is that if I see/click on the ad but don't buy the product advertized then site owner profits on acciunt of ad buyer.
So what's next—the urge to feel guilty if you don't buy everythig you saw an ad for?
It is about time to end this obsession with ads as the only way to monetize…
We're all parasites of society in some sense. If we didn't have a technologically complex world, Ars wouldn't have an audience. Maybe they should be paying us for having anything to write about at all!
I think community sites and subscription sites will be there to fill the void when ad-driven sites go down in flames. Apparently Ars is still in business though.
I won't shed any tears or feel any guilt if sites fail, because I think people will produce content for free. I think creation and dissemination of information is a basic human drive for a sufficient subset of the population to keep all of us "parasites" well fed. If you can figure out a way to get paid for it, good for you, but don't think you can demand that I experience the world through your ad utopia. I refuse to live on your terms.
Taking actions that in sum lower the probability of things you like being produced in the future is incredibly stupid.
I don't think it's particularly stupid because the actions of an individual choosing to block ads will have a negligible impact on a site, whereas viewing the site without annoying advertisements will provide a more favorable experience for that user.
Hence, from the position of the individual ad blocking is a rational choice.
(I'm aware that in aggregate this leads to sites folding, but I'm talking purely from an individual perspective. Tragedy of the commons and all that.)
3rd party javascript ads hosted on ad servers should be blocked. The majority of them disrespect web site viewers, so it is a rational decision for web site viewers to block them.
If a site is running ads that they don't mind being associated with and are worthy of reader's attention, they shouldnt mind hosting them directly from their webserver as content.
The article starts off saying that ad-blocking is not unethical, but then goes on to strongly imply that it is. e.g.
I think in some ways the Internet and its vast anonymity feeds into a culture where many people do not think about the people, the families, the careers that go into producing a website.
And:
And anyway, my point still stands: if you like this site you shouldn't block ads.
These sound like ethical statements to me. I may be reading more into the language of the article than is warranted, but that's how I read it: "Don't block ads because it hurts people, hurts businesses, and is therefore wrong to do."
"If I had to generate revenue to keep my sites going, I would find a way other than advertising to do it. Or I'd shut them down."
He makes it sound easy. As though there weren't a multitude of websites facing the same problem with covering their operating costs.
TV before cable faced a similar dilemma. Anyone could access it, but how do you pay for it? Ads did. Cable TV came along with commercial-free channels, but the consumer would pay for those directly. That solution has been discussed with some websites, and it's generally ill-received (e.g. NYT, Hulu).
I think ads can work, I wish they were done better in many cases. What I won't do is criticize them for their business model without offering a suggestion of my own.
Clearly not enough people value what they do enough to warrant paying $50 a year (I don't, but I only go on their site a few times a year and am totally cool with seeing the ads so I consider it great value).
Stop making the world a garish and hideous place to live by flooding it with ads.
There are people so soft that they consider the world a "hideous place to live" because of some advertising? There are people who can barely eat each day without getting so offended by a few commercials.
It so happens that advertisements are devastating to my well-being.
This is crazy talk. Is it even possible to argue against someone who resorts to saying they get "very emotional" when seeing any sort of advertising or that advertising "devastates" their well being? Is he scared of animal crackers as well?
Advertisement, like any art form, is made of 90% garbage. The difference with all the other art forms is that there is a whole industry that works towards force-feeding the greatest number of people with that the garbage.
A few times I was so disgusted by a movie that I walked out of a theater. I don't have the choice to walk out of most advertising, I don't have a choice which advertising I see in the first place. Most of the ads are in the worst possible taste and dripping with hypocrisy. I guess you get used to it somehow, after all those years. I bet you could get used to eating shit too.
When was the last time animal crackers flashed an almost pornographic image at you while your boss or your kids were standing over your shoulder?
When was the last time animal crackers told your daughter she was fat, or wasn't wearing enough makeup, or wasn't dressing slutty enough?
When was the last time animal crackers tried to take advantage of a person who had financial problems, by trying to convince them that they needed another high-interest credit card, a floating-rate mortgage, or 'debt consolidation'?
I really don't understand this sentiment. If you don't like the ads, stop using the site.
There is a coffee shop in Tempe, AZ that I very very rarely go to. Why? Because the wifi there is horrible. It's slow; there are too many people there using pandora and not enough bandwidth to go around.
Would it be appropriate for me to whine about this while continuing to go there?
When using a website (or any service) you are basically choosing to endure a bit of inconvenience (spending money, or viewing ads) in exchange for something you want (coffee, content). I get that people want to skip the first part, but I don't get how they think that could ever work.
While the arguments about ethics and morality are relevant, I prefer to focus on the implicit challenge: Can more publishers find ways to make money from ad-free content?
Adblock is like Napster. People want the content; the vast majority of publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers doesn't like the price they're being asked for the benefit they're getting, and many of them are willing to take the content without paying.
There are always people who won't pay no matter what - in the music world, filesharing is still around. But a lot of people started paying for music again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay.
There are a few sites like LiveJournal and MetaFilter that have ad-free options for paid users. Maybe this is a small niche and will never be big business. But maybe there are a lot more user who would pay to support ad-free content - if the price is right.
What if someone made a browser plugin where every time an you visited a website it gave that website 1/1000th of a cent (and took 1/1000th of a cent out of your paypal/google-checkout/etc. account), and in exchange that website saw the plugin and served you a version with no ads. How many people would choose to use this plugin?
Ok, let's take a simple example here. Google published loads of Chrome adverts to raise awareness of their new browser.
The result of those adverts is that a lot of people switched to Chrome, making it a valid browser choice and, hopefully, hastening IE's demise.
A number of people who read about Chrome in adverts would only have heard of it a year later if it wasn't for the ads. I think those ads were perfectly well justified - they raised awareness for a product which most people didn't even know existed.
There's many more examples like this. I think your point is incorrect.
PS: I don't actually support Ars in this anti-ad-blocker thing. I think ad blockers are absolutely fair game, much like ads themselves are. Ars has no right to demand your attention on their ads, so fuck'em. They shouldn't come whining about ad blockers, they should just upgrade their business models to something that works in a world of ad blockers. That said, declaring that ads are completely useless is equally wrong.
Profit is not wrong. Profit is not screwing someone. Any freely contracted trade results in a net benefit for both parties. It has to by definition, or else it wouldn't be entered.
When someone says ads are "screwing them over", I have to laugh and wonder what kind of life that person leads that annoying ads are considered an atrocity. If you want to see being "screwed over", look no further than our tax code. Our tax code is a system where one does not own 40% of their life, where there is an explicit understanding that anyone above a certain income level is not going to get out of it what they pay into it, where there has become a rational expectation that the money will largely -- to the order of 90% -- be wasted on bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. In all of the battlefields of life, you choose online advertisements to rail against? Hell, give Sally Struthers a dollar a day already.
> It has to by definition, or else it wouldn't be entered.
This is Econ 101 dogma. I'm surprised you can write this without examining it further. People are not rational actors. That's why advertising works.
What's particularly interesting about your using this argument is that advertising exists precisely to manipulate the non-rational decision making of consumers.
Once we realize that humans in general are wired such that they make certain cognitive mistakes again, and again, we have to modify our understanding of a "freely contracted trade".
A trade where I take advantage of your human nature to encourage you to make a decision that is in my interest is not truly freely-entered.
With respect to your tax rant ... you should know that people respond more to what is annoying or vivid than to longer term considerations.
Ads are a low-grade but constant irritation, whereas I make enough money that taxes are just some numbers on paper.
"The idea that I have a moral obligation to stare at an advertisment, the thought I have an ethical obligation to voluntarily annoy myself for the sake of a company's profits... it would be hilarious if it wasn't so repugnant."
The author seems to be saying that he is entitled to take from the creator of content without having any obligation to give something in return. I believe that this misses one of the most basic principles of our economy - namely the idea of a value-exchange. You get, you give. I believe it's morally wrong to get, get, get, and not be willing to give.
No, he has no obligation to stare at an advertisement, but if he's not willing to stare at the ad he should look at other ways to compensate the creator of content or else not feel entitled to view the content.
Not that it matters, but the author's post is obviously link-bait also.
I think the author is trying to say ask if people should treat the cat-and-mouse game between businesses and consumers with the same respect as exchanges between individuals. I agree it's morally questionable to "get, get, get, and not be willing to give", however, how many companies do you expect to think that way when dealing with consumers?
OK, a thought experiment: what about an ad blocker that downloads the ad, but doesn't display it? Because the argument seems to be that it is not necessary to look at the ad, only to download it, so that the site get's paid.
I am pretty sure such an downloading ad blocker would be considered a kind of click fraud.
Well, any CSS `display: none` trick does this. I've been using it for years in my own minor-tweaks, because hiding via CSS with a user stylesheet is easy compared to hacking something like AdBlock.
You know, I'd like to not block adds. I really don't want to. But some sites make me.
I didn't block them until a few months a go. But there were some adds that were just so obnoxious. The worst were these ones that played really loud sounds -- they made me keep my speakers mute, because I didn't want my computer to spontaneously start playing music and wake people up.
One day I was just utterly fed up. I went to Mozilla's site, downloaded an add-blocker, set it to the default settings, and voila! Everything was much nicer.
I'm going to reinstall my OS soon -- I find using apt-get to upgrade break things -- and I'll use the Internet without an add-blocker for a few days. If things are as bad as they were, I'll use one again. Maybe try and find a list that only blocks obnoxious adds, though.
Ars article was about how when they blocked the ad-blockers people complained.
If you have the views espoused in this article you should have no problem using an ad blocker which tells the web-server that it's blocking ads and leaves it's up to the website whether it chooses to return you content sans-advertising.
If you're using an ad blocker that specifically misleads the website into thinking ads are being viewed when they're not, then that's clearly unethical.
Imagine if you asked someone for a favour and they asked you for a favour in return. And then they did what you wanted but you only pretended to do what they wanted. That's exactly the same situation as this.
I rather like Ars. The content is a bit varied in quality, but I do have a look at it most days. The best content makes me reminisce about Byte Magazine.
The ads are annoying. The alternative is $50/year. It just feels like quite a big sum of money when the extra benefits are not that interesting. $50/year that also gives me a good daily iPad edition, with articles I can save, without ads and full archive access may start being in the right realm for me.
Maybe I should just pony up the $50 to experiment, I did save it on my dropped newspaper subscription recently. :)
$50 a year is the price of 2 books (or one more expensive technical book). Every year I buy at least a dozen books I don't read. So I wouldn't say that $50 is an unreasonable amount if they content is good.
This discussion reminds me that the only site where I haven't minded the ads so much (and I think I might have even bought something from an ad there once), is Penny Arcade. The reason is that they carefully choose ad campaigns to be tasteful and only advertise stuff that they themselves consider worthy of purchase. I still don't like them enough to turn off adblock specifically for that site though, so I guess that counts as collateral damage.
The solution seems obvious. Run adblock, and also run a background script that reads your browser history and hits the same sites, ads included, without displaying anything. You get your clean Internet and as far as the advertisers can tell, they're getting their "impressions."
[+] [-] kevinh|16 years ago|reply
When we stop doing things that don't negatively affect us much and help others, we've lost the benefits of altruism that helped our species evolve beyond the rest.
[+] [-] lotharbot|16 years ago|reply
It's up to content providers to figure out how to get paid. Guilt-tripping readers into viewing ads is one approach; running skeezy ads is another; paywalls or premium content is another; merchandising yet another. Each of those affects the value your readers get from your site. Given that, how can content providers best align their interest (getting paid) with their readers' interests (getting good content cheap/free)?
I submit that, if sites ran carefully-vetted ads that were of legitimate interest to their readers, were not annoying, and did not compromise user privacy, far fewer of us would use adblock.
[+] [-] barrkel|16 years ago|reply
What if the technology wasn't visible, wasn't in browsers, but instead was in our heads? What if we had a perfect ability to selectively filter out what we see and not let it affect us consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously? What if our awarenesses were so under our control that advertising could be scientifically proven to be useless?
Would this ability to focus our minds, free ourselves from distractions and pay deliberate attention only to what we willed, be morally or ethically wrong?
[+] [-] justinph|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tichy|16 years ago|reply
If I block ads, the site should have a higher conversion rate, so they should be able to ask for more money for the ad impressions.
[+] [-] philk|16 years ago|reply
(And indeed economic models which work on the basis of enlightened self interest have been the most successful and delivered the most good to their adherents).
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] scott_s|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njharman|16 years ago|reply
* as practiced in real life not some wanker's theoretical definition.
PS it was probably selfishness and greed (combined with tribal "us vs them" so that (generally) you'll steal from the fuckers in next valley over but not your children) that helped our species destroy and/or exceed our competition.
[+] [-] natrius|16 years ago|reply
1) Pay for a subscription.
2) If no subscription is offered, ask for one to be offered.
3) If you'd simply like less offensive ads, ask for less offensive ads.
Taking actions that in sum lower the probability of things you like being produced in the future is incredibly stupid.
"The internet is also a wonderful thing. FIRST a person or company puts a lot of information somewhere that everyone can read it effortlessly for free, and THEN they sometimes expect me to look at their ads. And I can simply choose not to."
Ars Technica doesn't expect you to look at their ads. They expect you to render their ads or pay for a subscription. If you choose to do neither of those, you are a parasite.
[+] [-] rimantas|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alayne|16 years ago|reply
I think community sites and subscription sites will be there to fill the void when ad-driven sites go down in flames. Apparently Ars is still in business though.
I won't shed any tears or feel any guilt if sites fail, because I think people will produce content for free. I think creation and dissemination of information is a basic human drive for a sufficient subset of the population to keep all of us "parasites" well fed. If you can figure out a way to get paid for it, good for you, but don't think you can demand that I experience the world through your ad utopia. I refuse to live on your terms.
[+] [-] philk|16 years ago|reply
I don't think it's particularly stupid because the actions of an individual choosing to block ads will have a negligible impact on a site, whereas viewing the site without annoying advertisements will provide a more favorable experience for that user.
Hence, from the position of the individual ad blocking is a rational choice.
(I'm aware that in aggregate this leads to sites folding, but I'm talking purely from an individual perspective. Tragedy of the commons and all that.)
[+] [-] metamemetics|16 years ago|reply
If a site is running ads that they don't mind being associated with and are worthy of reader's attention, they shouldnt mind hosting them directly from their webserver as content.
[+] [-] zb|16 years ago|reply
This guy (first sentence, no less): "There's an interesting article on Ars Technica about how blocking ads is somehow unethical..."
Give me a break.
[+] [-] briancarper|16 years ago|reply
I think in some ways the Internet and its vast anonymity feeds into a culture where many people do not think about the people, the families, the careers that go into producing a website.
And:
And anyway, my point still stands: if you like this site you shouldn't block ads.
These sound like ethical statements to me. I may be reading more into the language of the article than is warranted, but that's how I read it: "Don't block ads because it hurts people, hurts businesses, and is therefore wrong to do."
[+] [-] isleyaardvark|16 years ago|reply
He makes it sound easy. As though there weren't a multitude of websites facing the same problem with covering their operating costs.
TV before cable faced a similar dilemma. Anyone could access it, but how do you pay for it? Ads did. Cable TV came along with commercial-free channels, but the consumer would pay for those directly. That solution has been discussed with some websites, and it's generally ill-received (e.g. NYT, Hulu).
I think ads can work, I wish they were done better in many cases. What I won't do is criticize them for their business model without offering a suggestion of my own.
[+] [-] petercooper|16 years ago|reply
Clearly not enough people value what they do enough to warrant paying $50 a year (I don't, but I only go on their site a few times a year and am totally cool with seeing the ads so I consider it great value).
[+] [-] Malcx|16 years ago|reply
Thats the issue, you paid money for the book, it's the business model the author used to make writing the book worthwhile.
Historically the Internet doesn't seem to support content producers this way.
[+] [-] Tichy|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|16 years ago|reply
There are people so soft that they consider the world a "hideous place to live" because of some advertising? There are people who can barely eat each day without getting so offended by a few commercials.
It so happens that advertisements are devastating to my well-being.
This is crazy talk. Is it even possible to argue against someone who resorts to saying they get "very emotional" when seeing any sort of advertising or that advertising "devastates" their well being? Is he scared of animal crackers as well?
[+] [-] zupatol|16 years ago|reply
A few times I was so disgusted by a movie that I walked out of a theater. I don't have the choice to walk out of most advertising, I don't have a choice which advertising I see in the first place. Most of the ads are in the worst possible taste and dripping with hypocrisy. I guess you get used to it somehow, after all those years. I bet you could get used to eating shit too.
[+] [-] briancarper|16 years ago|reply
Likewise, ad-blocking isn't really "devastating" the internet, is it?
[+] [-] jfager|16 years ago|reply
When was the last time animal crackers told your daughter she was fat, or wasn't wearing enough makeup, or wasn't dressing slutty enough?
When was the last time animal crackers tried to take advantage of a person who had financial problems, by trying to convince them that they needed another high-interest credit card, a floating-rate mortgage, or 'debt consolidation'?
Should I keep going?
[+] [-] blhack|16 years ago|reply
There is a coffee shop in Tempe, AZ that I very very rarely go to. Why? Because the wifi there is horrible. It's slow; there are too many people there using pandora and not enough bandwidth to go around.
Would it be appropriate for me to whine about this while continuing to go there?
When using a website (or any service) you are basically choosing to endure a bit of inconvenience (spending money, or viewing ads) in exchange for something you want (coffee, content). I get that people want to skip the first part, but I don't get how they think that could ever work.
[+] [-] NZ_Matt|16 years ago|reply
Easier said than done.
[+] [-] mbrubeck|16 years ago|reply
Adblock is like Napster. People want the content; the vast majority of publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers doesn't like the price they're being asked for the benefit they're getting, and many of them are willing to take the content without paying.
There are always people who won't pay no matter what - in the music world, filesharing is still around. But a lot of people started paying for music again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to something they were willing to pay.
There are a few sites like LiveJournal and MetaFilter that have ad-free options for paid users. Maybe this is a small niche and will never be big business. But maybe there are a lot more user who would pay to support ad-free content - if the price is right.
[+] [-] thinkbohemian|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gizmo|16 years ago|reply
Of course, every website in the world would have to support it and micropayments don't work, so... it's not realistic.
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] swombat|16 years ago|reply
The result of those adverts is that a lot of people switched to Chrome, making it a valid browser choice and, hopefully, hastening IE's demise.
A number of people who read about Chrome in adverts would only have heard of it a year later if it wasn't for the ads. I think those ads were perfectly well justified - they raised awareness for a product which most people didn't even know existed.
There's many more examples like this. I think your point is incorrect.
PS: I don't actually support Ars in this anti-ad-blocker thing. I think ad blockers are absolutely fair game, much like ads themselves are. Ars has no right to demand your attention on their ads, so fuck'em. They shouldn't come whining about ad blockers, they should just upgrade their business models to something that works in a world of ad blockers. That said, declaring that ads are completely useless is equally wrong.
[+] [-] GHFigs|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moron4hire|16 years ago|reply
When someone says ads are "screwing them over", I have to laugh and wonder what kind of life that person leads that annoying ads are considered an atrocity. If you want to see being "screwed over", look no further than our tax code. Our tax code is a system where one does not own 40% of their life, where there is an explicit understanding that anyone above a certain income level is not going to get out of it what they pay into it, where there has become a rational expectation that the money will largely -- to the order of 90% -- be wasted on bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. In all of the battlefields of life, you choose online advertisements to rail against? Hell, give Sally Struthers a dollar a day already.
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|16 years ago|reply
This is Econ 101 dogma. I'm surprised you can write this without examining it further. People are not rational actors. That's why advertising works.
What's particularly interesting about your using this argument is that advertising exists precisely to manipulate the non-rational decision making of consumers.
Once we realize that humans in general are wired such that they make certain cognitive mistakes again, and again, we have to modify our understanding of a "freely contracted trade".
A trade where I take advantage of your human nature to encourage you to make a decision that is in my interest is not truly freely-entered.
With respect to your tax rant ... you should know that people respond more to what is annoying or vivid than to longer term considerations.
Ads are a low-grade but constant irritation, whereas I make enough money that taxes are just some numbers on paper.
[+] [-] adammichaelc|16 years ago|reply
The author seems to be saying that he is entitled to take from the creator of content without having any obligation to give something in return. I believe that this misses one of the most basic principles of our economy - namely the idea of a value-exchange. You get, you give. I believe it's morally wrong to get, get, get, and not be willing to give.
No, he has no obligation to stare at an advertisement, but if he's not willing to stare at the ad he should look at other ways to compensate the creator of content or else not feel entitled to view the content.
Not that it matters, but the author's post is obviously link-bait also.
[+] [-] zacharypinter|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tichy|16 years ago|reply
I am pretty sure such an downloading ad blocker would be considered a kind of click fraud.
[+] [-] Groxx|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colah|16 years ago|reply
I didn't block them until a few months a go. But there were some adds that were just so obnoxious. The worst were these ones that played really loud sounds -- they made me keep my speakers mute, because I didn't want my computer to spontaneously start playing music and wake people up.
One day I was just utterly fed up. I went to Mozilla's site, downloaded an add-blocker, set it to the default settings, and voila! Everything was much nicer.
I'm going to reinstall my OS soon -- I find using apt-get to upgrade break things -- and I'll use the Internet without an add-blocker for a few days. If things are as bad as they were, I'll use one again. Maybe try and find a list that only blocks obnoxious adds, though.
[+] [-] ig1|16 years ago|reply
If you have the views espoused in this article you should have no problem using an ad blocker which tells the web-server that it's blocking ads and leaves it's up to the website whether it chooses to return you content sans-advertising.
If you're using an ad blocker that specifically misleads the website into thinking ads are being viewed when they're not, then that's clearly unethical.
Imagine if you asked someone for a favour and they asked you for a favour in return. And then they did what you wanted but you only pretended to do what they wanted. That's exactly the same situation as this.
[+] [-] bjelkeman-again|16 years ago|reply
The ads are annoying. The alternative is $50/year. It just feels like quite a big sum of money when the extra benefits are not that interesting. $50/year that also gives me a good daily iPad edition, with articles I can save, without ads and full archive access may start being in the right realm for me.
Maybe I should just pony up the $50 to experiment, I did save it on my dropped newspaper subscription recently. :)
[+] [-] gizmo|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ShardPhoenix|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DennisP|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] betageek|16 years ago|reply