Comment by yoo1I | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yoo1I | Hacker News Reader

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There's the difference: you seem to be getting something out of the ads. For me it's 100% irrelevant. If I need something I will go look for it. If what I need is so special that it can't be found by an internet search, rest assured no-one would make an ad for it.

I am not sure why you use the term "cognitive dissonance" for referring to a situation where I consume without paying for something, and I don't feel entitled either. It feels very sonant to read clean websites.

If someone chooses to provide a resource it's their issue to figure out how to make it profitable. Trying to set up a fake moral pressure which requires me to listen to/watch mundane, uninspiring bullshit that I do not care about, that wouldn't make them any money from me anyhow, is kind of a strange way to go through life. If I went to your website for it's great content, why do you want to force me to look at something else instead? My brain resources are too valuable to be used to process to hear someone's lies about their products.

In essence you want me to pay for your things by quite literally wasting my time.

How did that become a thing, I wonder ...

It's pretty simple. The great content is created because the site can afford to pay for it. The "something else" I'm forcing you to look at is keeping the servers on. They HAVE figured out how to make it profitable, and you've figured out how to avoid paying for it. Just because you feel that the moral obligation is manufactured doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Paywalls are not the answer in all cases, and I do think there are moral as well as technical questions here.

I call it entitlement because you want, and are getting, a free lunch. I call it cognitive dissonance because as an adult with bills to pay you must understand that you are hurting a business by consuming content that costs them money to create and host without paying for it, be it with your time or your money.

you are hurting a business by consuming content that costs them money to create and host without paying for it

And if I chose not to consume their content, how much money would it save them?

That sounds like entitlement according to the OP's definition.

Maybe, but that wasn't my point. My point is that it's useless to have a discussion about the economic impact of individual "pirating" of website content because the discussion costs more than the piracy.

I would submit they have not figured out how to make it profitable, lest we would not be in the situation that we're in.

Clearly there is a dissonance between the product your consumers want, your content, and the product you're willing to offer them: your content mixed with advertisement. That's an unfortunate situation.

Why does the advertisement make you money in the first place though ?

Someone out there with an actual product or service, want's to sell their product. To increase sales, they pay you an amount of money that they think represents the amount of sale they will generate from the buyers that buy based on the advertisement run on your site. Whether it's through the proxy of some ad network or not.

If I am not willing to buy any products in the first place, I don't have to be factored into the amount the company is willing to pay to advertisers, as it will not increase their sales. If, based on just viewing the advertisement, I still am, that price is slightly inflated.

All what I am doing by blocking ads is bringing that price closer to it's actual value. Now, that's not in your interest as a content producer, but you don't have to be all moralistic about it and try to make me feel bad.

You might argue that that's incorrect, and after viewing enough advertisement I might be persuaded to buy a product that I would not have wanted to by before, but I am not willing to give you that power over my mind for mundane stuff like deodorants and beverages.

That is the height of shit that is not my problem. The "moral" argument against ad blocking goes away when you consider:

- The security implications of the large ad networks (how many malware scares were the result of exploit-laden ads being served on large, popular sites?)

- The privacy implications of same (tracking all the things)

- The large ad networks attitude towards said problems. ("Meh.")

The moment the sites that show these unvetted ads take some responsibility and agree to reimburse me and my company for my time spent dealing with a security breach caused by their shitty practices is the moment I begin considering not blocking ads at the firewall, and not a second before.

They want all the benefit with none of the responsibility. And that responsibility goes well beyond "paste some javascript we gave you in your header".

As long as the transaction is that one-sided, people will continue blocking, and no amount of moralizing is going to change it. Get used to it.

A site is a site is a site. Whether it serves incomprehensible text or comprehensible 'content'. When you decided as a site owner to open up your entire content to the world for all to consume as is without authentication or some sort of DRM strategy it's available to everyone. And I mean everyone. You can freely close your site off if you want but stop lying to yourself that you're entitled to make your site profitable. It's like saying you're entitled to ROI if you make a product regardless of how people view it (as useless or bad). You're not entitled to profitability. You're only entitled to the chance to become profitable and no more. Please etch that idea into your forehead because from my POV you're the one acting as if you're entitled to free money.

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