[toastercat]

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of ads and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly.

There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then services won't host the content, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy the services they use in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target).

If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make their own service work or investigate the long list of alternative platforms.

[Terr_]

My view is that core bargain was fine, but advertisers have broken the agreement with other offenses, like:

* Autoplay videos that preemptively take my bandwidth.

* Autoplay audio that takes over my speakers unexpectedly and interrupts other things.

* Forms of pop-ups that clutter or disrupt my tab/window control.

* Being spied-on by a system that tries to aggregate and track all of my browsing habits.

* A mostly unaccountable vector for malware and phishing sites.

* Just a genuinely horrible experience whenever a page is one part content to three parts blinking blooping ever shifting ads that would make Idiocracy blush.

They try to pretend customer resistance is just over the most innocent and uncontroversial display of ads, but it's not true, and it hasn't been for decades.

[NicuCalcea]

I wish there was a middle ground where I could block ads like the ones you mention, while allowing privacy-respecting ads that don't ruin my browsing experience. I know Adblock Plus have their "Acceptable Ads" policy [1], but that just meant letting through ads from companies that paid them, like Google [2].

[1] https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/5/4496852/adblock-plus-eye-g...

[safety1st]

Well, hang on. Your comment is fair minded, but to be fair we have to consider the context.

The context is that the courts have found Google holds two illegal monopolies within the online adtech market [1], the remedy for which has yet to be determined. Furthermore the DoJ has sued Meta for holding one as well and that trial is now underway. [2]

I don't know about you, but to me, if the counterparty breaches a contract, that contract is now null and void. Same goes for a social contract, and if someone tries to kill me or rob me, whatever social contract we may have had, is now null and void.

Fortunately Google and Meta aren't actually taking hits out on anyone as far as I know, but the fact remains that the market makers for these online ads, are either outright convicted criminals, or being sued by the government for such. I don't see that we have any social contract to respect or allow any of this. It is right, just and moral to oppose the very existence of online advertising in my opinion, until the illegal abuses are corrected.

If the court has resolved that Google's breaking the law, how about we get an injunction ordering them to halt their ad tech business until the remedies are implemented. Why are we going so easy on them?

You don't owe crooks anything, neither do I.

This isn't about being cheap or breaking a fair deal. It's about asking that law and order be restored within American business and society. What's the point of this society, what moral justification does it have to exist as it is, if it keeps on breaking its own laws to protect the most powerful?

Now it's unfortunate that publishers (websites) get caught in the crossfire of this, they might not agree with me when I say you should oppose all online ads full stop until the problem is corrected, but they are getting screwed by Google and Meta and they would be more than happy to see justice done.

[1] https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/18/court-ruling-agains... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Meta

[MaxikCZ]

This is the best counterargument I have hard so far. Saving it and using it next time someone brings that up, hope you dont mind I stole it without generating $0.000000001 of ad revenue in compensation.

[streptomycin]

You could block only ads from Google and Meta. Most large sites use header bidding, where Google's ads are a fallback only if no other ad company bids higher, so most ad revenue come from those other companies. And IIRC Meta doesn't participate in that at all, so for them you'd just have to block ads on their own sites.

[monegator]

Yeah, no thanks. I used to think like this, and i remember exactly what happened the day i installed my first adblocker: i was already annoyed that some sites i visited employed very annoying ads, on both sides of the window, occupying about 20% of the screen, each. And they were serving an animation with _very_ loud music.

That day instead, when i opened the page 3-4 other pages opened as soon as the website loaded, all serving loud and obnoxious virus alerts, porn and some other crap. But how? I disabled popups a long time ago.

That day i found out about self-clicking ads. That day i installed an ad blocker.

It is THEM that have broken the social contract. Screw them and screw ads.

(good thing that i wasn't on dialup anymore. Anybody remember that? scam sites that would make your dialup bill go up crazy, as if you were calling a courier's help line)

[throwawaygmbno]

This is a fine social contract for the independent blogger just sharing their thoughts on the Internet and maybe hoping to get a few dollars for their server cost.

Mega corporations that have been sucking up personal data for a couple decades now are not people. There is no social contract with them. They just sell your data.

If you know what they are doing, know how to block it, and refuse to, you are complicit in making the world a worse place. Corporations are not people that should be treated with the respect you are talking about.

[specproc]

For so many arguments, I'm also thinking copyright here, the framing is always about the little guy. These laws/practices are there to protect/enable small businesses and content creators.

The reality is very much the opposite, they're about maximising revenue for monopolies. I see no social contract here.

[tonyedgecombe]

>This is a fine social contract for the independent blogger just sharing their thoughts on the Internet and maybe hoping to get a few dollars for their server cost.

The trouble is the ad-blockers will block their ads as well. Visit somewhere like John Gruber's Daring Fireball site which has the least offensive ad placement possible yet his adverts are still blocked.

[pmontra]

> Mega corporations that have been sucking up personal data for a couple decades now are not people.

IMHO this is a very wrong take. Mega corporations are people. Demonstration: nobody goes to work at Google for a while. Everything stops, technical stuff and non technical stuff. No people, no corporations, small ones and large ones.

[rchaud]

> However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly.

No it isn't. Free websites exist: Wordpress, Blogger, Wix, Weebly etc. The only "ad" they show is a static banner for their own platform, not the giant scripts Google loads for Google Ads. Neocities and Digital Ocean are $5/mo for a custom domain and hosting, theme it anyway you like.

Most "content"-focused websites like Buzzfeed, The Verge, Gizmodo etc simply embed third party content (Youtube, Vimeo, Giphy, random poll generators) instead of hosting them on their domain. Much of their content is rehashing news articles with a paper-thin layer of "analysis" on top. Then they add metric tons of ads, and throw in affilliate link garbage "product reviews" on top.

This is the dropship-ification of the web and it pretty much killed the free website culture of the Geocities/Anglefire era.

[sceptic123]

Just a shame that Wordpress has been weaponised to create the crappy seo content affiliate spam sites that are making the web so shitty these days

[randunel]

The websites you speak of don't get to decide what my hardware and my software does when running in my hands. Their content is a suggestion for my user agent, not some unbreakable law. If they don't like it, they should shut down completely.

[nobody9999]

>Their content is a suggestion for my user agent, not some unbreakable law. If they don't like it, they should shut down completely.

Alternatively, they can also refuse to serve you their content unless you turn off your ad blocker. Which would be fine. It is their content they're hosting after all.

And it's also fine for you to decide not to turn off your ad blocker and not view their content.

[charcircuit]

That's why the parent said it was a social contact based on the honor system. Just because you can technically block ads, it doesn't meant it's the right thing to do.

[pwdisswordfishz]

If I am allowed not to look at the screen when an advert is playing, then I should be allowed not to play it in the first place. There is no moral obligation on the part of the viewer here.

An advert is an investment: someone pays money to broadcast something and hopes that will generate awareness. Any investment is allowed to fail.

[Dban1]

Wait till they roll out advert quizzes. Answer the 3 questions correctly about the advert you watched before you're allowed to continue.

[strken]

The problem is that commercial ad-supported websites force themselves into all available online spaces: search results, discords, social media, affiliate links on blogs. The only way to stop them doing so is to take away their source of revenue.

If ads weren't profitable, you wouldn't find no results for your search about which kitchen knife to buy, you would would find better, less weaponised, more relevant results. If you don't block ads then you are directly contributing to a world with more ads and less content.

[somenameforme]

Sites are using ads to be anti-competitive, such that you literally cannot compete with them on price because their price is $0. I'm rather surprised that we haven't seen the emergence of a site where you are literally paid to use it, because that business model is 100% viable.

And the reason that business model is viable is because people don't realize how literally valuable their attention is. And most people also think they're not heavily affected by advertising. Sites are actively exploiting this to deter competition. I would not be, in the least bit, sad to see this state of affairs end.

[Fnoord]

SomethingAwful forums have this for ages but also newspapers do, too. As do streaming services. Turns out youth don't have much to spend (nor to people generally outside of West), and it stops sockpuppets somewhat.

[Pooge]

I am fine with static ads like you would have in newspapers. Another answer to this thread lists things advertisers did.

Those are the reasons tracker blockers were created in the first place. Advertisers went too far and now they lost control and weep.

My privacy, attention and digital security is not worth sacrificing for those greedy, unregulated people.

Literally nothing prevents a blog from having static images for sponsored content. Yet, nobody does it.

[pmontra]

We had static ads. We called them banners and websites abused them. Some sites were so bad that it was challenging to find content between horizontal and vertical banners. Animated GIFs followed soon and then everything else we know. Some sites are still as bad as those old ones. I'm can't believe what eyes are seeing any time I look at friends browsing on their computers.

[scbzzzzz]

The problem is not with the ads but all the bad things that come along with it. Collecting unnecessary personal data, targetting, disregard for others privacy and list goes on.

These small bloggers/websites are letting the huge ad corporations take up the butcher job and cry when people use adblock.

Google provides a way to turn off ad personalization and when i turn it off you know what i see. Scam/adult/gambling ads and these small websites/bloggers are ok with showing scams to earn 0.01cents. then where they broke the social contract.

Google/meta with all the policing of billion youtube/fb videos/posts dont have same policing for ads quality. Thats where they broke the social contract.

Yes they need to make money, one alternative, I am ok with companies using my compute to run crypto mining( or scientific worlloadw ) when i use their website instead of ads. Small companies should look out of box for money rather than employing a butcher to make money.

[hackable_sand]

Let us not forget the other major problem: ads.

[bb88]

Ads in and of themselves aren't really the issue. It's the tracking that is.

If the ad was delivered without cookies and without tracking, as just a stationary gif, I'd be more okay with it.

But without tracking, back in 2008/9 ish before the real estate crash, the Simpsons made a reference to the dancing cowboys ad for selling mortgages. These were the adjustable rate mortgages that went sky high shortly after closing on the house.

https://trailers.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1f73a011-858b-418b-940...

[euLh7SM5HDFY]

> Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads.

That hasn't been true for decades. In a way the race to bottom has already finished, we are at "100% clickbait" stage. I checked it very carefully and both Android build in "news" page and Microsoft's equivalent in Win11 Weather&News Widget are just that.

[kelnos]

> There is an unwritten social contract here.

Yes, there is. It's, "I ask your server for bytes, and if your server gives them to me, I interpret and display them however I wish".

The idea that someone downloading a webpage from a publicly-hosted web server could be a "freeloader" is ludicrous.

If you really must extract some form of payment from literally everyone who visits your site, you'll have to put up a paywall. Otherwise, if you give me content when I request it, I'm going to display it however I want.

> If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine

The "contract" you describe is just something you made up. I've been on the internet since the early 90s, and that has never ever ever been the deal.

Advertising is malware for your brain. I won't let it in, and no one else should either.

[frotaur]

Yes, the paywall is reasonable, I agree. I think what the OP meant by 'social contract' is that if everybody were to use an adblocker, we would end up with a mostly paywalled internet. All the sites that currently have ads, would have a paywall.

The reason why some people get to browse the internet free, and without ads, is because there are some people that don't. Hence the 'leeching' part.

The part that annoys me sometimes, is that when there IS the option to pay to remove ads, and people still use adblockers in this case. How is this justifiable, morally?

[cookiengineer]

I wanted to point out that the users that download websites to read them aren't the freeloaders.

The actual freeloaders are the ISPs, because they don't share the profits with the networks they provide access to.

In a better world, Browsers would all be peer to peer, and share their caches end-to-end, with verifiable content hashes, so that websites don't need to provide the majority of bandwidth.

But here we are, Google not giving a fuck because they actually like being a monopoly that does not need to create a healthy ecosystem because everyone involved is paying them anyways. With resources, and with money. Who would have thought?

[oaiey]

> modern ad networks

Ad networks have been that invasive since the early 2000s. They now only support more channels. It is a stone old business and literal the source of Google finances for a very long time.

[redwall_hp]

The first wave of ad blockers are a feature built in to all browsers, and nobody thinks twice about: pop-up blockers.

[tossandthrow]

> Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads.

Read any SEO blog and you will see how absurd this claim is.

It is simply not true.

[ruined]

i host a website because i have information that i want to put on the internet, not because i want ad revenue.

[dns_snek]

My eyeballs and attention are not for sale, I will pay you a reasonable fee for your effort but I will never watch ads and subject myself to tracking as payment, just like I won't provide you with sexual favours as payment, no matter how much you declare it to be "the social contract".

[barnabee]

There’s no social contract in advertising supported content. It’s a business model based on calculated, long term psychological manipulation[0].

At this point I’d prefer it all to disappear entirely along with the content that “can’t exist” without it. I’m pretty sure we’d be ok.

[0] Sounds dramatic, but it’s basically true.

[schaefer]

gentle reminder: online advertisements are so dangerous that the fbi recommends you use an ad blocker [1]. If there’s a social contract at play, users aren’t the ones breaking it.

Their behavior is abusive, and our behavior is self defense.

Let the ads networks do the hard work of 1) cleaning up their act, and 2) rebuilding trust before you worry about your end of the social contract.

[1]: https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-recommends-installing-an-ad-b...

[account42]

Ad-supported services undercut honest ones by pretending they are free when you are paying for them indirectly. They are also incentivized to engage in other bad behavior like gaming SEO or wasting your time with low quality content that's designed to increase ad impressions instead of helping you. I do not recognize the social contract you are implying there is and would be happy if all ad supported sites shut down so that better ones (either actually free or paid honestly) could take their place.

[ozgrakkurt]

There is no social contract with any corporation, only legal contracts. If you want social contracts, you have to use the things that are owned and built by actual people with a reputation.

[southernplaces7]

>However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly.

You know what's even uglier? The notion that because I got access to a bit of your free content, I should then be completely fine with utterly pervasive, deeply granulated parasitic tracking, measuring, watching, spying and recording of as many of my habits as possible. This is a sick notion, an idiotically, disgustingly fucked up concept of fairness and those who subscribe to it are either deluded or neatly entrenched in earning from it.

No, nobody has any "right" to expect people to submit to utter surveillance because that person created content that they can't get enough people to pay for directly. I'd rather see any sites on the web that can't sustain themselves without such ad garbage burn and die than make it somehow punishable to evade their shitty cookies and other trash.

With that said, unlike many on HN comments, I also don't think ads should be banned.

[innocentoldguy]

There needs to be a balance. I don't block ads on sites that respect me enough not to drown out the main content with ads. However, I always block sites that have excessive ads or use pop-ups. On a side note, whoever invented pop-up ads should be sentenced to life in prison on a diet of pickled beets and prune juice.

[dspillett]

> I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of ads and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly.

This is why I don't go as far as running sponsorblock. Yes the sponsored segments can be irritatingly repetative¹ but at least they don't result in direct commercial stalking, popups, surprise audio/video, etc, and they more directly benefit the content makers.

--------

[1] sponsor segments are actually useful for juding creators: if one I would otherwise trust starts parroting the smae script as others but trying to make it sound like they wrote it themselves ("my favourite feature is …") then I know to tone my level of trust down a notch as it is then clear their opinions have a price.

[freehorse]

I don't consider myself/users responsible for solving the broken business model of a big part of the modern web. The problem of ads is not just "I do not like ads", which is also a valid reason imo concerning how intrusive and distracting they are blinking and yelling around and making everything slower, but a matter of privacy and safety. There is no social contract that accepts this. Moreover, I have no way to actually know or consent to be served ads before actually loading them, so I have to use an adblocker just in case. I would not mind if a website detects my adblocker and not serving me the content either. So in this sense, imo if a website decides to serve me the content without ads it is up to them, not me.

I would care much less if tracking/personalisation was not part of the ad systems and we were just shown ads based on the content of a webpage. Actually, I am ok with stuff like sponsor segments from content creators, sponsored articles etc. There are ways to serve ads without invading privacy or making it disturbing, but modern advertising industry has chosen a different path.

There are also alternative models, subscriptions, actually buying and *owning* the content (how outdated! let's have ads instead), donations, having a "pro" version with extra optional features etc. There is important stuff in the internet (eg wikipedia) that works fine without ads at all. But if you want to scale to a billion $$$ business maybe it makes sense to rely more on ads, but I do not find this compelling as an argument for users to suffer ads or part of any social contract.

[rkomorn]

> I would not mind if a website detects my adblocker and not serving me the content either.

How do you feel about ad blockers continually trying to evade detection, though?

Or guides about how to avoid things that block access to users of ad blockers?

I think the "you're free to block me for using an ad blocker!" argument doesn't mean much when said ad blockers do their best to not let that happen in the first place.

[const_cast]

Its not my responsibility to make your stupid ass business model profitable.

If your business model is stupid, that's not my business. I don't run your accounting department, I'm not your CFO.

Figure it out, or don't. I don't have the time to handhold every corporation I interact with and make sure they're getting their money. They are not babies, and I am not their father.

[zartcosgrove]

I feel like SEO and click bait of all kinds has already broken that unwritten social contract. I feel like your argument is that using an adblocker is impolite, borderline unfair. But I also feel like we, the users, have been exploited by surveillance capitalism. If anyone broke the social contract, it's the websites that participated in [enshittification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification).

[ManlyBread]

How can you say there's some sort of a social contract here when the ads side has no problem with psychologically manipulating me, outright lying to me and putting me in danger just so they can extract a tiny bit of profit from me? In any other context such a party would be classified as sociopathic. Why should the ad industry get a pass?

[WorldMaker]

I've come to feel that the unwritten social contract was broken decades ago when ad networks decided their best bet was to become data farms and to sell ads and private data to any bidder regardless of ethics (and morality and truth in advertising laws).

My only "ad blocker" is Firefox enhanced tracking protection and walling off Facebook (Meta, but their only app I still use is Facebook), Amazon, and Google logins to separate containers and/or apps and/or private browsing tools. I feel like this is a good ethical compromise still fills my part of the social contract. If a site wants to show me the most generic, untargeted ads, I welcome that.

They don't get my data for free, that's not part of an ethical relationship with ad networks in my mind. I am happiest to keep them in the dark and feed them junk and lies, that is all I think that they deserve.

It's fascinating how the ad networks respond to this. Several, like Admiral (to especially call out at least one offender) whine loudly that I'm using an ad blocker because they've confused targeting and tracker blocking with ad blocking and ask me to disable it. They don't even try to show ads. It seems pretty clear what their real slimy game is and I don't think they deserve to exist. Ads existed for centuries without tracking and privacy violations. Ad "common sense" up until about the 1980s was the broader the message and distribution the better; demographics and targeting was about saving money with the trade off of losing potential audiences. The more you target an ad the less you benefit from people that didn't even know your product might apply to them, or to people that might buy it for others or as gifts. "Everyone knew that."

Google is nasty in its own ways. ReCaptchas get worse. YouTube ads have several levels of hell, including interruptions in parts of videos it shouldn't interrupt, all sorts of racist and intellectually disgusting groups (including but not limited to allowing outright scams, platforming disinformation, and spreading malware) it allows to buy ads, and how much it allows those groups to serve 30 minute/1 hour/2+ hour videos as "ads". It's amazing how many ads I've felt I had to report from hate groups alone. All of that seems to background radiation for everyone with access to Google's ad networks, but the less tracking data you have the fewer targeted ads you see and the more the mask off greed feeds you terrifying things that make you wonder how humanity is okay with all this and why Google isn't seen as more of a greedy, evil company for how much of this stuff they fail to vet and continue to associate their brand with.

Show me old family friendly TV advertising staples like Clorox ads and whatever the latest cereal fad is, please, I don't mind. That's a written social contract that worked for a long time, especially because it had rules like Truth in Advertising laws and followed ethics boundaries like brand contamination by association with criminals and liars. Targeted advertising is and was a mistake. Ad networks believing private data was their new playground and revenue gold mine was a mistake. Neither of those, I think fit the old social contracts about ad-subsidized content, and I think all we can do is send a message that both of them break the spirit of the contract and it is past time for a change/fix.

But that's also maybe just me and a personal crusade at this point. I don't see a lot of people going to the sort of privacy minded extremes I have and also still not install an actual ad blocker. But that's how I'm trying to square the ethics dilemma of appreciating ad-subsidized content, but also understanding that the internet is no longer safe without some sort of privacy-minded safeguards that companies like Admiral and Google are going around and calling "ad blocking", because it is starting to interfere with their real, more lucrative, and much more evil business models.

[floppiplopp]

Ads are not the problem. It's the ad-tech surveillance and the malvertising. There are ways to show ads that are not a threat. When online services choose to become hostile, adblockers are the defense. I don't mind ads, I don't mind paying for services without ads, in fact I do for multiple services and news. I don't want surveillance ad-tech anywhere near my devices. It's the business decision of the company, that aides the worst enduring tech businesses with data collection and targeted scams and malware. So fuck'em. I'll steal gladly from overt assholes.