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Comment by epmatsw | Hacker News Reader

It's really interesting to me how strongly people dislike actions like this and the "Please turn off your adblock" thing. If this were a physical store, it's the equivalent of you taking something and the owner saying "hey man, that's not free, this is how I make a living". It seems like the right response would be "Oh wow, sorry, I won't take that any more", not "Go away, you're bothering me, and I'm going to keep taking this". I love me some adblockers, but it's sometimes hard to reconcile blocking ad-blocker-blockers ethically (and from a politeness perspective) in my own mind.

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Taking something from a store without paying is theft. Loading a subset of the resources on a web site isn't.

It's more like a "store" owner who makes his products free and supports it by selling advertising on the ceiling. Then complains when people realize they can avoid the obnoxious advertising by staring at the floor.

You have a right to protect your property but you have no right to protect your business model. Blocking ads has nothing to do with property rights, it's just a business model thing.

If these companies really wanted to force people to view ads, they'd make users sign a contract agreeing to do so. But of course that would scare everybody off. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

No, it's more like those terrible flyers you get in the mail and shoved under your door, except you have to pay the postage on them.

Don't suck up my bandwidth on your crappy ads.

Don't suck up my bandwidth on your crappy attitude. You know facebook is ad supported. If you don't want to look at ads, why do you keep going there?

> why do you keep going there?

Have you ever considered that some contents are only available there? It's more the fault of some users that post required informations there, but it's a reality.

Personally I rarely go there, and would rather never have to go there.

additionally: FB forces itself into your life by adding tracking on non-FB sites. Even if I never go to FB, they can still track me, and sell my data.

Indeed their shadow profiling via other websites is a serious concern (I usually try to block requests to fb/goog on other websites, with the help of some browser addons).

But my main concern, as other people mentioned it here too, is rather about the safety of the displayed ads: malevolent ads are an important security (and privacy) risk. And I doubt ads sellers would cover any damages occurring to me because of them (moreover proving it seems difficult).

I fail to see why that consideration should make a difference. Facebook provides a service, if you want to use the service, you see ads. If you don't want to see ads, don't use the service. Your livelihood is not threatened if you don't see some information hidden through a facebook login.

If some friend of yours handles invitation through FB, that is because facebook provides a very good infrastructure to handle those things. In order for them to do that, they have to hire all sorts of people which kind of need salaries. Those salaries are paid by their business model. You are blocking their business model, consuming their resources and denying their employees and shareholders. Because...?

I can see enabling adblock for the internet at large and sites you don't care about, but you KNOW that facebook relies on ads and you repeatedly use them.

I also want to hear if you use google and adblock them too. Do you rarely go there too?

No. Facebook does not provide a service, you said it yourself, it is "ad supported". What they provide is a platform that companies pay to show ads on. Kind of like billboards and ad agencies. Snickers bar drawn on the street is not a service, even if you happened to glance over it.

> Your livelihood is not threatened if you don't see some information hidden through a facebook login.

I would have missed an exam, because the place and date were only communicated through that medium.

> I can see enabling adblock for the internet at large and sites you don't care about, but you KNOW that facebook relies on ads and you repeatedly use them.

As I said, I rarely go there (maybe two or three times per year?). I'm more a statistical noise at that level. I doubt it threatens their business model, they seem to be doing pretty well recently.

In fact I'm probably making them and their partners save some money by not loading ads for products I would not buy anyway, it seems way more ethical to me.

And in fact all of this is dwarfed by the fact that ads in general are a big security risk.

It's a voluntary commercial relationship between me (or any other patron of Facebook) and Facebook, and none of your business. Neither I nor Facebook need to justify any aspect of said relationship to you or any third party as long as they are legal, and even if any aspects were illegal it's still none of your business. I am more than welcome at Facebook without ever looking or seeing a single ad they're showing, and I'm pretty sure Facebook would resent your attempt at driving their customers away.

My attempt at the analogy would be: someone offers to come to your house and, using your Legos, build a little Lego castle in your living room for free, so you say "Sure," and when they come over they build the castle, but then they use the rest of your Legos to build a little Lego giraffe.

"Why'd you build a giraffe, too? I just wanted a castle."

"I get paid to do that by the National Council on Giraffes."

"Well, sorry, these are my Legos and this is my living room, so I'm going to take your giraffe apart and build a drawbridge for the castle."

An ad-blocker is just a robot that automatically takes apart Lego giraffes so you can use those Legos for other things.

It's more of a situation where you've been informed well in advance that this person will be building a giraffe, and that your castle is in fact funded by their giraffe-building activities -- but once they've built the castle, you try your damnedest to prevent them from completing the giraffe.

Okay, I bite. Which exact part of Facebook's sign up process informs you that you are obliged to look at ads, install cookie beacon and not block any of that? Do I automatically agree to all of that just by typing fb.com and hitting enter?

To slightly correct your analogy, you have a full history of everything I think and do and buy and own and talk about and everything my friends and family think and say and do, and you know darn well I think rhinos are cute in an ugly bulldog way and I like pet tropical fish too. And businesses sell tons of rhino trinkets and tropical fish aquarium stuff, its a big business, and skimming off a few percent in ad sales results in a lot of money for someone smart enough to target me. And you know I'm a generous idiot who's given money to 'save the rhinos inc' and have the teeshirt and everything and I'll probably do it again. Because rhinos are cool.

And given all the above data, you're so incompetent at selling that you come into my house and deposit a giraffe on my coffee table. I kid you not, the above paragraph results in a giraffe. Get out of my house, git out now ... The situation with modern 2016 advertisement is so awful, so incompetent, so inappropriate, its too insulting to even look at. Like going to a bar and asking for a beer and get handed a hard boiled egg instead, total WTF reaction, they're so bad at their job that a few decades ago this would be a candid camera reaction, like where's the dude with the hidden camera making fun of me?

As an eye rolling experiment, no exaggeration or hyperbole, I disabled all my blockers and went to facebook to see what they'll sell me... A Home Depot brand marine/boating deep cycle battery. Thanks guys, nice targeting. Ready, Fire, Aim. No, I don't currently own a boat, or a trolling motor, never bought a deep cycle marine battery. Unbelievable. Well, guess I'm not missing much by ad blocking, and the world economy isn't losing much sales by my using ad blocking.

Internet advertising in 2016 is a complete waste of money and when the people paying the bills figure it out, the crash is going to be epic. Someone at home depot paid good money to try and sell me a deep cycle boat battery. Nobody should be giving FB ad money, that's for sure, a fool and their money are soon parted. I believe the blame toward ad blocker users is a compensation reaction, can't blame the people who can't sell competently, so we'll attack someone less defensible, like ... those freeloading end users. In the long run, however, willfully not understanding the real problem is just going to make the crash sooner and deeper.

It is fascinating that people believe an equal transaction is occurring in this situation and using an ad block is the same as theft in an age of abundance and mechanical reproduction.

>but it's sometimes hard to reconcile blocking ad-blocker-blockers ethically

There is nothing unethical about it. If you want to be paid for your content, charge me for it and let me decide, voluntarily, to pay and receive it, or not.

This argument comes up every time there's discussion about ad-blockers: if your writing, music, poetry, punditry or photography is good, people will pay you for it. You don't "deserve" income merely by throwing something up on the web and having a user stumble onto it.

So, if they offered a PayPal button, and I decided I didn't want to pay via PayPal, would it be okay to not pay in that case?

By putting up the blocker blocker, the site has clearly indicated how you can compensate them for the content, and the only ethical way I can think of around it would be to not consume it.

For crying out loud, what is wrong with people these days, are moral compasses so wacked out by constant corporate brain washing that people don't see there is simply no issue here. None at all. Not even from Facebook's point of view. If Facebook didn't want me to use their service without me seeing their ads, they WOULDN'T LET ME use it. It is that simple. No one is forcing them to let me in. Unlike a lot of their users who are in a real sense forced by their social connections to use it.

In fact it's hilarious how “anti-blocking” people here think they're somehow philosophically and ethically upholding Facebook's part of the deal–by driving people away from Facebook. It's the exact opposite of what FB wants and needs!

It's more like "don't come in to use the AC and shade in the store if you're not going to buy anything". I am not making an opinion on the practice, only on your analogy.

That's not bad actually. Hanging out on FB with and ad blocker is literally loitering in their servers. You are racking up costs for them and actively refusing to provide value in return.

IHMO, it would be very reasonable for FB to deny service to ad-block users. But, I understand they'd rather attempt to keep you around first.

Your mere presence provides value for them as you are part of the reason why your friends are on FB.

But it's the cost of doing business for many businesses. Would you consider an air conditioned mall that throws people out if they don't shop in any of the stores "reasonable"?

Very good. There are a lot of mall walkers who don't buy anything, just take advantage of the large indoor space and its climate control. And much like the "network effect" people like to talk about, malls don't want to be empty. They would rather be full of non-shoppers than 1/10th full of customers, because perception is everything. If no one is at the mall, why would businesses come to the mall?

Shoppers aren't the mall's customers, businesses are. The mall doesn't care about the customers, they care about luring businesses to locate there and pay rent. And if they have a ton of non-shoppers loitering around, that makes their mall more attractive, not less.

Yes, if those people did it frequently and explicitly and wrote posts online about how great it is and how everyone else should do it too.

Even from a security/privacy standpoint? Malicious/Unwanted 3rd party JavaScript is a serious issue.

More like if, at a free event where donations were voluntary, the staff all complained loudly about people who didn't donate.

Absolutely. And if you seeded a torrented movie, that is billions of dollars of lost potential profits, right?

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