Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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I'm all fine with people creating content and then expect to make some money off ads. Just don't be an asshole about that. There are sites that have mostly unobtrusive ads, I'm fine with that. There are sites (like Episode Calendar) that politely ask you to turn AdBlock off when you're using a free account, and since I derive some value from them, I happily comply.

But my issue, and I guess that of many other users, is that ads are mostly a scam. Products that are actually valuable to the buyers don't need aggressive advertising; just announcing that they exist (through unobtrusive ads) is usually enough for the word of mouth to bring in customers.

Advertising companies are one of the best examples of an adage I have - "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to be separated from it by enough layers of abstraction". Ad companies are those layers of abstraction. They will lie, they will spam, they will abuse users and as a CEO who outsourced customer acquisition to them you may never have an accurate picture of just how much crap people are exposed to on your behalf.

Also, theres OkCupid who puts up a nagging image try tries to pressure/guilt trip you into turning it off for the site.

Yes, there are also sites like that, and such behaviour tends to drive me away. There's a discussion forum I visited today that had a banner saying "We see you're using an ad blocker. By doing so, you're contributing to the downfall of this community". Well, I like the site, but guess what - I keep my AdBlock active on purpose.

This whole issue is about Human Decency 101. If you behave like an entitled asshole, don't be surprised people don't do what you want them to, like viewing obtrusive ads.

>> "This whole issue is about Human Decency 101. If you behave like an entitled asshole, don't be surprised people don't do what you want them to."

That could also apply to you. You want content. You don't want to pay for it - but you will view ads. But then only ads that fit your specific set of criteria.

Adjust your expectations. As some other commenter wrote, publishing a web site is a gift you make to your viewers. By very definition. I don't really understand where did people get that expectation that you can just publish something on-line and the money will flow to you.

If you want me to pay for your gift, say it up-front. Put on a paywall, ask for a donation, or if you really want to stick to ads, kindly ask me to disable blocking. I'll happily comply.

>> "As some other commenter wrote, publishing a web site is a gift you make to your viewers. By very definition."

Unless you can show me that definition you are just stating an opinion and further proving my point.

Ok, I shouldn't have said "by definition", the phrase I'm looking for is "self-evident".

I put some information on an open-access network for everyone to see. How this is not a gift? What in this process entitles you to expect people to pay you without you explicitly asking for said payment?

There are social rules and expectations around such things and they're older than Internet. Complaining about people blocking crappy ads is just being an asshole. If you want to get paid, say it up-front. If you need resources to support your work, again, say it up front. Many will happily comply. And if you don't want people accessing your work for free, introduce a paywall. Just avoid this whole "give for free and guilt-trip later" business model, because it's malicious behaviour.

It's not a gift because you only put it up there with the intention of making money. But you are right, they should probably just paywall their stuff instead of fighting adblockers. Then we'll continue to use user-agent and referer trickery to get around paying money for content.

Probably, but at this point social expectations start to shift towards legitimizing their cause. I do skip paywall from time to time - but only on articles someone shared with me, and I don't feel good about it. In other cases, I just go somewhere else (I might buy subscription if I really care about that particular publisher/content).

On one hand you are using their resources by engaging with theor community and I guess you had to agree their term of services. They aren't really binding by law, i.e. They can not force you to watch ads, but they can refuse to provide the service to you.

On the other hand ads are a mess, between popups, popunder, autostarting video and recently the damned ad that redirect the full web page on mobile sites.

The solution here is not using ad supported services instead of acting as a self entitled asshole, but one would still need adblocks to protect themselves from when visiting random pages.

> they can refuse to provide the service to you

I will gladly accept that. Then I'll either pay them or not, depending on whether I find the community valuable enough. This is fair.

The only reason I didn't disable AdBlock for that site and explicitly decided to keep it is because of the way they asked for it. Had they said, "Dear visitor, we see you're using an ad blocker; please consider disabling it, because we really need the ad revenue to support the community", I'd even happily start clicking on the ads for them.

If you publish something and expect a compensation for it, say it up-front, and either restrict access to those who follow your chosen compensation route or stop whining. Publishing something on the Internet with open access is giving a gift to people. Giving something away and then guilt-tripping people into compensating you is antisocial behaviour, and if you ever tried to pull it off face to face, you'd be shunned by the community you're in.

I'd even happily start clicking on the ads for them.

Be careful with this. It can get the site accused of click fraud, based on previous things I've read on HN.

I didn't mean that much ad clicking, only that I'd click an ad on purpose every now and then. But thanks for the reminder, I'll keep it in mind.

"if you ever tried to pull it off face to face, you'd be shunned by the community you're in."

This actually happened where I live! We have pedestrian mall where buskers can get a permit to perform. Most of them are quite pleasant, and I've paid a few. (Some are truly awful, but that's life.)

But one time there was a guy who was "giving away" CDs of his work. If you took one, he'd harass you until you either paid him some money or gave the CD back. There was a big sign that said they were free and he would shout at people about "Hey, I've got free CDs here!" He would even chase down people who took one while walking by! I'm pretty sure he was kicked out because I haven't seen him since then. But everyone who fell into his trap agreed it was a scam and that it was a crappy thing to do.

Exactly. People are fine with paying, as long as the distinction between an unconditional gift and a business transaction is being kept.

In downtown SF there are a couple scam monks who pull exactly this with bead bracelets. They are very aggressive even if one tries to give the bracelet back.

They do that with blank cds in chicago all the time.

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