My process
1. Install https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer
2. Laugh maniacally.
1. Install https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer
2. Laugh maniacally.
All that being said, I'm not sure how me seeing the ads helps them as I never click on them anyways, but I chalk that up to their business issue. I do not necessarily believe that just because they don't provide their content in a form/implicit contract that I wish to participate in, that I am still entitled to consume that content. A prime example for myself is EA Games. I disagree with a lot of their publishing practices and business decisions, but that doesn't mean I play all their games as pirated versions anyways, I simply abstain. Consuming the content by skirting this implied contract only results in this arms race you see in games, online content, and just about any other form of media. It's a competition between users wanting money-free content and publishers wanting to control exactly how their media is distributed and paid for. I don't think either side in this fight is right, but by participating on one side it eggs the other side on.
To be fair, the current anti-anti-adblockers like anti-adblock killer could defeat such a measure as is. Short of rendering their page to an image with ads builtin, there's not much you can do if someone's willing to replace JS.
What do you have against a good old fashioned cat and mouse game?
As it is right now, we are disincentivizing people from participating in a system that actually has a chance of surviving. Without compensation in some form, higher-tier journalism can't survive, and I for one don't think a world where all news comes from amateur bloggers is a better one.
The only way the model is going to change is if everyone adopts ad blockers and anti-anti solutions. And that's not going to happen. So I've got to deal with what we realistically have until someone comes up with this mythical better model and makes it work.
I can't change the model, but I can change what my computer does about it.
Wait, I don't get this "business issue". If you really never click the ads, you're ultimately not making anyone any money either. In fact, if you think ad-blocking is bad, merely never clicking on them is even more toxic to that industry. And I don't mean bandwidth. Because now it's the businesses paying to uselessly show you ads who are paying for your free content.
How is that better? You're still consuming your content for free (which is a terrible thing :P), except you're now also voluntarily punishing yourself with advertisements you don't care about that do nobody any favours. Of course you're free to believe that makes up for it, or something (not judging, they used to base entire religions around the concept).
I find it a bit hard to reconcile chalking up never-clicking-ads as their business issue, and simply not downloading and displaying the ads at all (thus also never clicking them) as a user problem.
In short, for most people, a paywall is a much stronger negative than ads, so it's not an obvious why somebody who wants to use ads should just use a paywall.
They could forbid JavaScript, require simple URLs, and flow their content around well-defined and crafted ad locations. Their site would load quickly, the ads would still attend to the image they intend to project to the reader. Metrics on such ads wouldn't require third party JavaScript to monitor.
None of their readers would be subject to malware. Reader and provider would not be an antagonistic relationship.
They could do all of these things. They seem to have chosen another path, and made the choice for their readers--those they've kept--at the same time.
That said, there are good, defensible reasons to run an ad blocker. Namely, that it's a security risk not to. That's not a moral argument though, and my only issue is with people that think they are justified to consume the content no matter the desires of the producer, that once it's published it's fair game. I have no problem with people that run an ad blocker but acknowledge that it does cause some harm. I count myself in that group.
Oh, I missed the bit where these people were hacking or forging credentials to get the content.
> that once it's published it's fair game.
Of course it is. Once you give me a newspaper I can cut out the articles I want - format shifting if you will. I simply can't duplicate them.
HTML is intended to be interpreted and rendered to the client's specifications. Don't expect this to change, it was designed this way for a reason. If that's not what you want, distribute PNGs.
That's okay, I seem to have missed that part where it's shown how that relates to my statement in any way.
> Of course it is. Once you give me a newspaper I can cut out the articles I want - format shifting if you will. I simply can't duplicate them.
That's after you've already gotten the material. You are addressing the method in which you consume, I am talking about your right (if not legally, morally) to consume. If you walk up to me and ask for my newspaper without offering compensation, and I say "sure, but you have to first look at this pamphlet I'll hand you with it", then I think in this example it is clear that throwing the pamphlet away prior to reading the paper is morally wrong.
Where I think most people differ on this subject is how accurate that analogy is for consuming internet content. If you believe the implication is clear that in visiting a site and retrieving their content that they would like to grant permission to view it based on the either an implicit transaction or an explicit statement (such as here), then you probably fall on one side of this issue. If you believe that no such implicit understanding exists, or where made explicit it's invalid for some reason, you probably fall on the other side of this issue.
For me, the arguments that fall along the lines of "once it's been sent I can do what I want" don't sit well because they feel anti-social in nature. We don't act that way with the people around us, why should be expect it to be entirely different just because we can't see their face? Unaccountability for poor behavior is a downside of anonymity, and something to to by mitigated, not accepted.
> HTML is intended to be interpreted and rendered to the client's specifications. Don't expect this to change, it was designed this way for a reason. If that's not what you want, distribute PNGs.
I don't think this really applies to my position in any way or the argument as I see it in any way.
For me, guilt trips are anti-social in nature. And from a business perspective, they're a losing proposition, because over time people just stop feeling guilty.
It's fine if you have your morals, but your morals are not my morals. And it's a more effective argument to talk about yourself anyway: "I view ads because I believe it's a fair exchange for the publisher's content."
So, while I'm kind of a hypocrite for saying you shouldn't guilt trip people, what I really mean is that I've found it's better to talk about my own morals than to tell people that I think they should have them.
I tried very hard specifically to not do this. The only case where I put a specific label on someone else's behavior was in an example in which one party is not acting in good faith. Specifically, much of the comment was about the dichotomy of views, and whether you think that example even applies to the situation we are discussing. To be clear, I don't think someone who uses an ad-blocker is immoral unless they themselves believe what they are doing is wrong, because I don't believe it's possible to be be accidentally immoral (and if you believe what you are doing is fully justifiable, it's moral, regardless of whether it's seen as social acceptable or not).
> It's fine if you have your morals, but your morals are not my morals. And it's a more effective argument to talk about yourself anyway: "I view ads because I believe it's a fair exchange for the publisher's content."
That is exactly what I did. The portion of the comment where I actually examine a stance is prefixed with "For me", and is about my relation to that specific viewpoint, which itself isn't meant to be inclusive of the entire other side of the argument.
I suspect you formed an initial impression of what I was trying to convey, and that colored your interpretation of my words. I urge you to go back and read my comment again, but keep in mind that my goal was firstly to provide what I thought was an accurate, non-accusatory assessment of the sides of the argument, and present them in a way where rational people could see the merits of each (and I may have fully failed in this), and then provide my own personal reasoning why one interpretation does not work for me. I guess that's why I was honestly confused when you started talking about a guilt trip, because that wasn't my intention at all (so I may have failed horribly in that respect).
> If you walk up to me and ask for my newspaper without offering compensation, and I say "sure, but you have to first look at this pamphlet I'll hand you with it", then I think in this example it is clear that throwing the pamphlet away prior to reading the paper is morally wrong.
"You shouldn't accept my gift without reciprocating."
> For me, the arguments that fall along the lines of "once it's been sent I can do what I want" don't sit well because they feel anti-social in nature.
"Your arguments are uncivil, you should make different arguments."
I get your point about "For me".
> We don't act that way with the people around us, why should be expect it to be entirely different just because we can't see their face?
"You should not treat your property like it's yours alone."
> Unaccountability for poor behavior is a downside of anonymity, and something to to by mitigated, not accepted.
"Your behavior is bad, you shouldn't behave like that."
I hope this helps, and I understand that I may have misread you, it's just my reaction / perspective.
That example was set up specifically to not be a gifting. If someone sets terms before giving you something it's not a gift, it's clearly transactional. In my mind, the newspaper is being given by someone at a stand, it's being "sold", but not for money.
It was set up this way specifically to show one particular way of thinking about it, not to imply that is the only way it can be seen, which is what I was getting at when I said "Where I think most people differ on this subject is how accurate that analogy is for consuming internet content." Some people believe it's a clear transaction, others seem (I assume, not being of this group) to believe it's not.
> "Your arguments are uncivil, you should make different arguments."
I can see why you think that, and it's due to a poor word choice on my part. What I was thinking when I wrote "anti-social" is "anti-societal". That is, anti-social but not in the colloquial sense. Specifically, since I think the exchange is transactional, ignoring my own part of the transaction on purpose is selfish in the singular, and society breaking when accepted by the masses. Almost nobody does this (that's sociopathy), but I think people have convinced themselves that it doesn't apply in this case (i.e. it's not a transaction, which is the root of my cognitive dissonance assertion in my original comment). This is nothing special, people behave in anti-social (anti-societal) ways all the time (lane hopping on the freeway, cutting in line, etc). It happens when we convince ourselves that the negative consequences, or the chance of them occurring, are small, but our need is great. The individual effects of this as small, but in aggregate it would be unsustainable.
But this is all couched in why I can't subscribe to that view, not why I think someone else should be ashamed, or feel guilty. If you don't think it's transactional, there's nothing to feel guilty about, as you aren't doing anything wrong in your own eyes. I happen to think people of that view are wrong, but I don't think they have anything to be ashamed of.
> "You should not treat your property like it's yours alone."
That's the point in question. If you believe the relationship is transactional, it's not fully your property until you've fulfilled your side of the bargain. I've been trying to show both sides of the argument, but you seem stuck on ignoring mine; It's not about controlling your property, it's about whether the transaction that makes it your property has even been fulfilled. If there were money involved (I sell you a paper for $1, but hand it to you before collecting the dollar. You walk away without paying), I doubt there would even be anything to discuss. The question is whether, and how, it's different if I expect something besides money from you. This is ambiguous in most cases, but when a site has a banner that explicitly outlines their views on ad-blockers, it's much less so.
> "Your behavior is bad, you shouldn't behave like that."
Should be viewed in light of my "anti-societal" meaning above. In my examples I use a person-to-person situation because I think people are much less likely to think certain behavior is acceptable then. If it's not acceptable then, why is it acceptable when you are anonymous, or the other side is not a person? That is, anonymity does seem to encourage some bad behavior because of lack of accountability, so is some of what we're seeing he attributable to that, or is it entirely separate?
> I hope this helps, and I understand that I may have misread you, it's just my reaction / perspective.
It does, and I hope what I was trying to express, is a bit more clear. That is, explicitly, "there is a disconnect between the sides of the argument, this is what I think it is, and here's my reason for choosing my side in light of that information".
The first is the implicit or explicit contract to view ads in exchange for getting to view content. Entering into a contract in bad faith or breaching a contract is both a legal and moral issue. When the terms of a contract are repulsive to me, I have no moral problem breaking them or lying about my intentions. I would let you pay me any amount of money to eat shit without proof and not follow through. You could always try and sue if that ended up being a problem. Generally though I won't enter into such contracts if there's a viable alternative.
The second thing is ownership of the property that's used to view the content. The argument here is that since it's my computer, I can control what my computer displays to me. I know that you have the copyright on the content and the ads, but copyright doesn't stop me from doing what I want with my own private copy so long as I don't distribute it.
So in the end, if you distribute content to me without verifying that I've viewed the ads first, you're putting yourself at risk for breach of contract on my part, and since I find ads repulsive it's a really high risk because it's my computer and I'm going to program it the way I want.
I'll readily agree that the content/ads thing is a problem, and that people deserve to make money for making things. But any fix to this problem is going to be systemic, not based on convincing people to play by the rules when they can easily get away with breaking them.
I believe it is a moral issue, but depending on whether it's a legal contract, or observed legally, I'm not sure it's a legal issue (not sure as in don't know the specifics of contract law and what is considered a contract).
> When the terms of a contract are repulsive to me, I have no moral problem breaking them or lying about my intentions.
I have no problem breaking a contract where it's been misrepresented to me. But when the terms are up-front and clear, but I don't believe they are fair, I don't believe I have a right to enter into that contract with the intention of breaking it. What's worse, trying to get someone to sign a contract with (up-front but) unfair terms, or lying about your intention to fulfill your side? Does it matter which is worse, if they are both bad?
> The second thing is ownership of the property that's used to view the content. The argument here is that since it's my computer, I can control what my computer displays to me. I know that you have the copyright on the content and the ads, but copyright doesn't stop me from doing what I want with my own private copy so long as I don't distribute it.
I'm not trying to make a case about having to display content, I'm trying to make a case about obligation to display content when you want to display other content. The medium is irrelevant. I would make the same case with paper. Having an assistant cut out the ads from a magazine (or removing and reprinting without them) before presenting it to you is equivalent in my eyes, and the same problem. The magazine is clearly offered with the advertisements as part of the package, to offset what would be the true consumer cost. That you are capable of having someone take scissors to it is not the issue; whether that breaks an implicit or explicit agreement based on the purchase of the magazine would be (and in this specific case the magazine would have a foreword saying it should not be altered from the form it was presented in, as that was part of the purchase price).
> So in the end, if you distribute content to me without verifying that I've viewed the ads first, you're putting yourself at risk for breach of contract on my part, and since I find ads repulsive it's a really high risk because it's my computer and I'm going to program it the way I want.
Every contract entered requiring something from both parties puts at least one party at risk the other will breach, and sometimes both are at risk. The other party putting themself at risk is not a justification for breaching the contract in itself, otherwise libraries would have a very hard time functioning.
Again, this line of reasoning only even makes sense if you believe there is a contract. If you do, then you either accept it or you don't, and you either fulfill your side or you don't. I know what I believe are the right choices of those available (where "right" means society perpetuating, not society breaking, when extended to all people).
I don't think you can argue the terms of ads on the web are upfront and clear. It takes serious reading to learn about all the different methods they use to track you now. They often give people malware. Is that part of this inherent "contract"?
> I'm not trying to make a case about having to display content, I'm trying to make a case about obligation to display content when you want to display other content. The medium is irrelevant. I would make the same case with paper. Having an assistant cut out the ads from a magazine (or removing and reprinting without them) before presenting it to you is equivalent in my eyes, and the same problem.
So you're saying that even though I paid for the magazine, I own the magazine and can do what I want with it, I don't have a right to use the paper it's made of as I please? Sorry, but that's utterly ridiculous. And I think most people would find it so too.
It'd be different if I borrowed the magazine, but since I own it I'd say it's fully within my right to cut out ads, chop it in half, fold it into planes, use it as toilet paper, what have you. That's my right as an owner of the magazine.
When the site has a banner that says they want their ads displayed, then that's clear. I've made it obvious that I think it can be ambiguous otherwise, but it is not in that case.
> So you're saying that even though I paid for the magazine, I own the magazine and can do what I want with it, I don't have a right to use the paper it's made of as I please?
No, that's not what I said. Very specifically, we are talking about whether you own the magazine yet when you haven't fulfilled the transaction that would give you ownership, and if that is actually a transaction. I've written extensively in this thread about exactly this. Either you didn't bother to read the back-and-forth rwjwjuwjudf and I were having, or ignored my point.
> It'd be different if I borrowed the magazine, but since I own it I'd say it's fully within my right to cut out ads, chop it in half, fold it into planes, use it as toilet paper, what have you. That's my right as an owner of the magazine.
Sure, if you own it. Very simple, if a magazine that costs $9.99 starts selling for $1.99 but has some conditions (you need to view all the ads at least once), do you fully own it before you've fulfilled that condition?
Specifically, what you identify as different in the following scenarios will probably illuminate the actual difference in your point of view to mine:
- You pay full price for a magazine without ads, which is $9.99.
- You pay a subsidized price for a magazine with ads, which is $1.99.
- You pay nothing (fully subsidized) for a magazine with ads, and an explicit signed written contract that you will not alter the ads.
- You pay nothing (fully subsidized) for a magazine with ads, and there is a notice that this price is only for people that agree to no alter the ads.
- You pay nothing (fully subsidized) for a magazine with ads, and there is no notice about ads whatsoever.
In which cases would you feel fine altering (of having someone alter for you) the ads?
Sorry, but it's _my_ computer. I control it. Publishers don't get to decide what it does or does not do. I do.
This is the same as music/movie piracy. Basically you're doing it because you dont have the legal/physical repercussions of taking other things in life.
With ad blocking you go right to the original source, ask them for a copy of the content, they give it to you, then choose how you're going to render it. They gave you the content. They never made me accept a license agreement on it. I can choose to render it however I damn well please because that's up to my computer. Does IE produce an immoral rendering of the page because it doesn't support a CSS feature they use? What if I load the page in Lynx and don't see ads, is that immoral?
Might depend on your country (or state). But it doesn't really seem like a legally enforceable condition to me. Not to mention all the practical snags of such a demand.
For instance, these ads are generated real-time and are targeted towards the user. Would yielding to that be part of the same demand? If you block or shield against targeting, or even in a private tab, or clearing cookies on exit. You could make the same argument that, this too deprives publishers (part) of their income because tracking is less effective.
What if the ads contain tooling for realtime monitoring how long you are "active" on the page, which parts your mouse hovers on, etc? Are we morally obliged that we run that code and (truthfully) submit that data as well? (Rhetorical question obviously)
Morality is tied to intention. If you can only access something with a screen reader and can't see ads, that's fine. If you're intentionally removing ads while full well knowing what they are for, that's immoral.
Then again morality is subjective to the individual so perhaps this is better described as basic ethics.
BUT the publisher intercepted you and said "you cannot continue with adblock turned on". Why do you think you have the right to see that content without seeing the ads when the publisher explicitly said you can't do that?
When he wastes your bandwidth with ads, he is the devil, but when you waste his bandwidth, it's perfectly OK?
Technical ability has nothing to do with it. You have the technical ability to stab someone with a knife. You have the technical ability to download a book, copy it and then distribute it. Is that OK too?
Just because you CAN do something does not mean you SHOULD do it.
Yes. He can try to stop me, just as I try to stop him. This is the game. It's an antagonistic relationship. There's nothing inherently "wrong" about either side - it just is how it is.
> You are not entitled to see the content.
If their server gives me HTML containing the content, it's up to _my_ computer what to render, therefore I am entitled to see or not see whatever is in that response.
I am very entitled to use of my own computer. They do not get to decide what happens once their content is on my end. If I were sending malicious code to their server in order to remove the adds or similar, you'd have an argument but since it's happening entirely on my computer, you don't. The entitlement to how my computer renders it rests entirely on me.
This is not a game. You just like to freeload and when somebody calls your bull, you throw a tantrum.
Blocking ads will only make things worse, btw. You just don't see it coming, yet. Just wait for the telcos.
You think your privacy is violated now? LOL.
Oh and btw, if you missed it, Verizon bought AOL. Have a nice evening.
> you cannot continue with adblock turned on
They don't say that. They tell their users "to continue, please whitelist our site or turn off your adblocker", which is a whole lot more irresponsible and something I am totally not okay with.
People might actually believe the message, they ought to turn off their adblocker and view the site!
I help many non-technical people clean their laptops (yes it takes a lot of time, but I'm a nice guy and it can be done during beers). I install them an adblocker. If the only reason was "because the Internet just looks nicer without ads", I probably wouldn't. But especially for not-very-technical people, an adblocker is usually a better (and way less resource-intensive) security defence than an actual virus scanner.
What if sites like Forbes manage to successfully guilt these people into disabling their adblockers? Forbes will get a few dollars yay and my friends may lose a few hundred because they got ransomware not-yay.
I wish they just told people to go away.
2) The site tells you, "hey, we see that you run adblock. If you want to consume our content you have to disable that. If you don't want to disable your adblock, bye."
3)You still go ahead to consume the content.
In what universe this is OK?
They didn't give it to you. They put a wall and said "You cannot pass this wall with adblock turned on". You decided to circumvent it. Because...?
Their "wall" as you describe it is actually just client-side code which runs on _my_ computer, not theirs, so I get to decide how it executes. It would be completely different if the "wall" was on the server side of course (for example, a paywall).
If it's on my computer, it's under my control. Just because it came from their server does not mean it has any rights on my computer at all. They're not entitled to my computer.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
That means posting civilly and substantively or not at all.
Well if you say it like that, it almost sounds harmless! But that's not what they're doing.
What they are doing, is encouraging/begging people to disable their adblocker--which functions as a security (and privacy) feature of the browser--instead of telling people to go away if they want to keep it on.
Of course there's no way to nicely word an honest message that communicates "adblockers are not welcome". Especially not for a site that depends on advertising revenue, it would never get past the marketing/editors. That's a big part of the problem; the majority of advertising depends on skirting the line between honesty and dishonesty, and this attitude tends to seep into the businesses that are so dependent on advertising.
This becomes an even bigger trap if their content-quality is on the low end to begin with. I'm not familiar enough with Forbes to say that is the case for them (IIRC it's not that bad, is it?), but consider all those really shitty clickbait sites with listicles and blogspam. That's what those advertising dollars buy us. Who is more likely to stop producing content if advertising revenue drops? High-volume low-effort clickbait writers, or the "quality content" writers that actually care about the topic they write about?