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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

But people the people who created those early spam filters - they all signed the Boulder Pledge. They all agreed that not only would they block spam, but they would also never ever buy a product promoted with spam.

> Nor is there a moral obligation to do so.

Don't pretend that you have unique moral authority, able to decide the rights and wrongs. If you don't want ads you should boycott ad supported sites - not giving them your traffic is at least as effective as giving them your traffic but hiding their ads. They respond to you by having advertisers paying for content. They respond to me by improving the quality of the content and charging for it.

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I dislike like spam and adverts in roughly equal measure and I've never heard of this Boulder Pledge.

> But people the people who created those early spam filters - they all signed the Boulder Pledge. They all agreed that not only would they block spam, but they would also never ever buy a product promoted with spam.

And people that use spam filters on a daily basis just like the fact that they don't get as much spam anymore. You know like people that use adblockers and appreciate that they don't have as many adverts anymore.

You are comparing apples and cats. If you want to compare apples and apples compare the people that created spam filters with those that created blockers and compare the people that use spam filters with those that use blockers.

> I dislike like spam and adverts in roughly equal measure and I've never heard of this Boulder Pledge.

How old are you? How long have you been using the Internet? Do you remember the time before commercial use of the WWW?

I also have been on the internet since before the WWW (not just its commercial use) and have run mail servers for businesses since the mid-90s. Never heard of the Boulder Pledge.

I’ve used the Internet since before the Web, and I’ve never heard of the Boulder Pledge either.

I've also been using the internet since long before the WWW even existed. I was there for MAKE.MONEY.FAST. Never heard of this "Boulder Pledge."

> Do you remember the time before commercial use of the WWW?

Yes

Any thoughts on the rest of my comments?

Not really, I was just curious about the[1] change in culture from "don't support people sending you ads by giving them your custom or pageviews" to "just block the ads, and take the content."

[1] There hasn't been any change. It's just my perception, and that turns out to be wrong.

I'd edit this if I could, but I can't because the edit / delete window has closed.

My favorite part of HN, the reason I prefer this news feed over any other, is because the comments are usually intelligent and civil.

Your comment here is neither, and it just turned a discussion about the morality of ad-blocking and the viability of ad-based revenue models into a dick measuring contest.

Not cool.

Sorry. Re-reading it it does come across that way, and deserves the downvotes.

It wasn't intended that way though - I was genuinely just trying to see if people who'd used the Internet earlier were more aware of things like Boulder pledge. (Turns out several people who had significant involvement in Internet email at the time didn't know about it.)

A more charitable reading of DanBC's comment is simply inquisitive. If we're going to hold civility in such high esteem, then we should also be assuming good faith, which it seems you have not done.

Honestly now. I am as enthusiastic a practitioner of the principle of charity as anyone else, but that doesn't mean you have to ignore overwhelming signs of bad faith when they're staring you in the face.

When Floegipoky decided DanBC's comment was probably not made in good faith, I don't think it's fair to characterize this as a mere assumption. More like an inference well supported by the available evidence.

Are we talking about spam or ads served over the web? If the latter - they are taking up my bandwidth!

If either reach your local machine then they are both taking up your bandwidth.

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