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Comment by MattDamonSpace | Hacker News Reader

I find dissonance between “I hate these products” and “I’m going to freeride by eg blocking their ads”

I know the effect is negligible but isn’t that just stealing

I always pay to remove ads. I only block if I'm left with no option to pay. You might consider it stealing, but I consider forced ads as psychological warfare, so on the whole I feel I'm in a morally fair place.

If you provide a service expecting the user to interact with your service in the way you designed and they do not, that is a problem with your service, not theft.

It would be theft if the user was bypassing payment-gated credentials, but that is not the case here.

TFA doesn't mention advertising in relation to the specific app in question, nor does it imply that it even has ads. The only mention of it is a broader "I don't like social media because of the ads".

He's paying for the gym already?

It is, and it’s pretty unfortunate that so many companies are getting away with stealing so much of my time, attention, and hardware resources.

I assume he's paying a gym membership. IMO, that membership (across all members) should be sufficient to pay for the gym to operate. If not, that's the problem.

> I know the effect is negligible but isn’t that just stealing

No. They pay for a gym membership, there is literally nothing to steal from the social media feed in the door-unlocking app.

No. But failing to loudly protest gives these companies license to continue.

Going to bathroom during the commercials is also stealing. Or maybe it's not stealing. The argument quickly becomes more complicated the more you think about it.

It becomes simple if you define stealing as having criminal legal consequences. Since there are none, it's not stealing.

I assumed we were talking about the moral argument. Is stealing still stealing if there is no government? If grok takes food from brog in the cave, is that not still wrong?

If someone looks away from ads while they're playing on TV, then watches the show they like, they haven't stolen anything. It's a technical point, not a moral one.

If you hate the app enough, you could see this as damaging them (consuming its resources without getting the ads). Even if it is negligible, it might feel good.

Guess I will steal then.

yes, just like you're stealing from the supermarket when you buy real food (low to no markup) instead of corn-syruped artificially-flavored slop, alcohol, and cigarettes (high to obscene markup). every time you leave the store without a bag of Doritos, a bottle of MtDew, and a pack of Marlboro, you're being a bad citizen.

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