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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Curious how you feel about ghostery.

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