It’s not the reader’s responsibility to subject themselves to your advertising | Hacker News Reader

It’s not the reader’s responsibility to subject themselves to your advertising

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19 pointsAdrock28 comments

If the ad-blocking crusaders succeed in eliminating all discrete advertising from the web, then what we're left with is (1) very little content (2) lots of paywalls and/or (3) a web supported by paid placement. If users don't allow the ads alongside the content, then the ads will become the content.

On the other hand, if you choose to block ads and recognize that your decision to block ads and enjoy the web as it exists today wouldn't be sustainable if everyone did it; just accept that you're freeloading and move on.

Writing off the effects your actions have on the future production of things you like is plainly irrational. If a site you like has created a hostile viewing experience, let them know. If they continue with their misguided efforts, go ahead and block ads, but you should try to ensure that they are profitable by making an effort proportional to your enjoyment of the site. Try harder to get your message across. Send them money. Do something. Doing nothing but harming their revenue stream harms yourself.

If you block ads based on a broad, generic filter set, you're hurting the sites you enjoy reading, and you make no sense to me.

I don't know what kind of surfing habits you have, but for 99% of the sites I visit, I don't have an "enjoyment of the site" to push me into being sympathetic for their financial needs. I find individual, useful bits of websites through Google or Reddit, take what I want or need from those bits, and then ignore the rest. Websites, in this way, are commodities; necessary evils to transmitting information or entertainment. I don't maintain "relationships" with these websites as if they were bands or political parties; they're more like one-night-stands. I think this is the way many people see the Internet as a whole, and that is why so many are amenable to unilateral ad blocking.

There are a few websites I do visit over and over (HN, for example), and I don't block ads on those—but I wouldn't start a long-term relationship with a site like that if its ads were obnoxious.

Those bits of information exist because they have revenue-earning potential. If you block all ads, you're making providing information less profitable, which will make it harder to find information in the future. Block ads on a site after you get annoyed by them. If it's a site you rarely visit, there's probably not much use in going further out of your way to help them out.

I do agree with you in principle—but it's not pragmatic, and you can't expect users to go out of their way to first look at ads, and then decide whether or not to block them. It's much more work on their part than either allowing, or blocking, everything (consider web-surfing like a flow state in programming, where having to decide whether to block an ad is an interruption that breaks flow. It's a tiny mental speed-bump that, when occurring often enough, greatly reduces overall mental velocity.)

And besides it being more work, it's also annoying, like you said; choosing to block everything removes the "annoyance factor" altogether. If you have a blanket-policy ad-blocker on, you never see the really, really bad ads that animate and have sound and make you hunt through your opened-in-the-background tabs to murder them. People don't like to be annoyed, and anything they can use to prevent themselves from getting annoyed in the first place will automatically be liked, even at the expense of the ability to find information in the future.

I'm not saying it's moral, or ideal, or anything like that—I'm just saying that webmasters will have to deal with (and work around) the fact that people like ad-blockers, for the same reason that people like eating fruit: it's a purely parasitic relationship where you take what you want, and the "victim," seemingly static in relation to you, can't do anything about it.

You're right that I'm probably fighting a losing battle, but I'd expect a group of people with a demonstrated proficiency in critical thinking to not take actions that make themselves worse off.

Unfortunately, the author's point about "toxic" advertising such as popups, popunders, etc. doesn't have anything to do with YOUR advertising. Ad blockers are generally turned on after a very negative ad experience with something like a popup-riddled site.

It's usually not the publisher who's creating great content that's delivering those horrible ad experiences. They are generally fighting their ad networks to police the bad ads because they hate them as much as you do.

If you don't like the manner in which an author chooses to support their work, don't partake of that author's otherwise free material.

If you're going to block their advertisements or otherwise transform their work, I'm not going to have a temper tantrum. Doing so seems objectively unethical, but in an "epsilon from jaywalking" sense, plus or minus. Even I block Flash.

There is no Board of Governors that decides what is or isn't "cheating" when it comes to laying out pages for advertising. The ethical response to a site that crosses the line isn't "now I get all your stuff with no ads". It's "now I'm not going to visit your site anymore."

Getting self-righteous about the reader's "right" to block advertising seems myopic. Yes, even when the advertising is unbelievably annoying. You can't have this one both ways. You're always going to be able to block ads, but you're not going to get to claim to be taking the high road when you do so.

Curious how you feel about ghostery.

Well that "now I'm not going to visit your site" depends on a lot of things. I may not want to visit that site, but most sites I go to are linked from somewhere like fb, reddit, digg, hn, so it's hard to remember which sites I don't want to go to.

It is a reader's "right" to block advertising and "get all your stuff with no ads." That's because it's the collective responsibility of site owners to maintain usability of their sites, because that ensures overall usability of the web. If people could shove popups forever, if there were no consequences, maybe they would and there would be no web.

Consequences are necessary, and different consequences send different messages. If people stop coming to your site you think the content is bad. If people block your ads or restyle your page that means your design is bad. It tells the site owner what he needs to work on.

No. Site owners have no obligation to be usable. They don't owe you anything.

Just because we don't like sites with "abusive" ads doesn't mean they're obliged to change to suit us.

They owe it to people who care about the web. Those people will make them pay and it's easy enough to do. Simple JS scripts to extract big chunks of text or aggregators that will take your content without linking back. Not to mention players like digg or reddit adding filtering for bad usability.

I wouldn't expect people who built the open web to sit back and watch site owners abuse users. They did not sit back when popups were the norm. Browser makers actually lose money if users are scarred off the web.

The ultimate consequence is from collective misbehavior. The web as it is can be endangered by ad abuse and the only way out is to go back to the old walled garden ways of Prodigy, AOL or Apple's App Store, where there is adult supervision.

No. They simply don't owe "people who care about the web" anything.

lol, ok the site owners don't "owe" web carers, but they're very vulnerable to their actions. People who are building the web and profiting from it are not people to cross. Either the web stagnates as they give up, and you lose, or they block your abuse, and you lose.

> Site owners have no obligation to be usable. They don't owe you anything.

And people who look at websites equally have no obligation to look at the ads, or even to configure their software in ways that make the ads appear.

So if you don't sit through the commercials on TV, by say, taking a leak, you're a thief? What about tivo?

I think your theory has some holes in it.

Ah, but notice that the commercials repeat, so that is built in to the annoyingly effective system. They time the second one for when you get back.

Nobody said anything about theft. This is just about cause and effect. If your actions will cause less of the things you like to be produced, you probably shouldn't do them. No one knows if you went to the bathroom, nor does anyone know if you're using Tivo unless you have a Nielsen box. Do whatever you want. However, if they're selling an ad-free, timeshiftable version of the show you're Tivoing, you will be better off if you make their business viable by paying for it.

Product placement is making that less of an issue for television. If the entire show is a Subway advertisement, you're probably doing your part by just watching it.

And so TV gradually devolves to hourlong Subway ads, and the Tivoers (myself among them) have done their part to get us there.

If your actions will cause less of the things you like to be produced, you probably shouldn't do them.

So I shouldn't pay off my credit card before it accumulates interest.

However, if they're selling an ad-free, timeshiftable version of the show you're Tivoing, you will be better off if you make their business viable by paying for it.

And public libraries are evil.

> So I shouldn't pay off my credit card before it accumulates interest.

I trust that you're aware of the absurdity of this comparison.

> And public libraries are evil.

That's better. If you like an author's previous works, you should probably buy her next book instead of checking it out from the library. Using libraries for discovery or reading older works won't have much of a negative effect on your own future enjoyment. Spending money for works by long-dead authors won't do much to incentivize new high-quality works, nor will purchasing books of uncertain quality.

>> So I shouldn't pay off my credit card before it accumulates interest. >I trust that you're aware of the absurdity of this comparison.

You're aware what the credit card companies call card holders that pay off their invoices in full, every month?

That's right: Freeloaders or Deadbeats.

I don't think the analogy is really absurd, but I do think you're trying to defend a right for profit. Which, I dare say, nobody has.

Nothing I've said could be interpreted as a "right for profit". All I've said is that if you want things you like to exist in the future, it is rational to make an effort to make them profitable.

The credit card comparison is absurd because people who pay off their invoices in full probably don't get much value out of the card. If they had to pay interest, they'd just stop using it. Plus, credit card companies make plenty of money from the merchants I buy things from. Again, I'm not saying there's a right to profit. I'm just saying that you should evaluate the value you get from goods and services, and take action proportional to that value in order to increase the chances of those things existing in the future.

> If your actions will cause less of the things you like to be produced, you probably shouldn't do them.

Neither of my actions (Tivo, or Adblockers) would effect anyone's bottom line.

I am a computer programmer, one of the most hard to monetize segments in the online ad space (read the industry journals about it).

The entire positions "Web professionals shouldn't use ad blockers" is nullified by the fact web programmers and other computer programmers just don't click ads, and the few they do, aren't worth crap. Advertising on a programmer centric site is like trying to run fried chicken restaurant in a gym.

That's all wrong. It's an ethics-free [1] arms race right now. If they want us to see their ads, they have to make us want to see their ads. That's all there is to it. Pleas to ethics'll work about as well as file-sharing lawsuits.

[1] "Ethics-free" because we won't have enough perspective to judge until ten or twenty years from now.

I find the color scheme of his blog somewhat ironic. It looks fine in grayscale but it is absolutely painful to read that red on that yellow. Textbook case for built-in readability if I ever saw one.

Came here to comment on that - it may not be your responsibility to look at the author's ads, but its the author's responsibility to help you read what he wants you to read.

More than anything, it was the drop-shadow on the text that got me. Completely unnecessary and distracting. Luckily I had a Readability bookmarklet all ready to go.

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