
Advertising is devastating to my well-being - bgray
http://briancarper.net/blog/advertising-is-devastating-to-my-well-being
======
kevinh
As naive as this may make me sound, I think this attitude is hurting society.
The idea that everyone is and should be trying to screw everyone else out of
as much pleasure and profit as legal is, in my opinion, detrimental to
society.

When we stop doing things that don't negatively affect us much and help
others, we've lost the benefits of altruism that helped our species evolve
beyond the rest.

~~~
justinph
While I agree with the sentiment, that's a whole heck of a love of evolution
to work against. Nature (think of life on the Serengeti) is all about screwing
over one creature for the benefit of another.

~~~
fexl
Human survival and wealth depend on voluntary production and trade. That is
already baked into the evolutionary cake. If human behavior ever became "all
about screwing over" other people, initiating force, and taking property
without consent, then the human race would die out. Of course, a small portion
of humans can and do live that way, but that is an aberration. If it ever
becomes the norm, misery, illness, poverty, and death will prevail.

[Ed. note: As expected, "red in tooth and claw" is voted up, and "people need
to cooperate" is voted down. If that's karma then I'll have no part of it.]

~~~
zaphar
While cooperation makes logical sense. The statistics and study of human
behaviour indicate that far from being an aberration "red in tooth and claw"
is far more the norm.

Don't mistake culture and societal norms for the norms of natrual human
behavior.

~~~
skmurphy
One good book length counter-argument to "red in tooth and claw" is Robin
Wright's "NonZero" (see summary site at <http://www.nonzero.org/> for
excerpts) that argues life's arrow is toward more complexity based on
cooperation and that it's not a "zero sum game" where every gain is someone
else's loss.

Wright's thesis for humanity is that people cooperate far more in the context
of society than they did even 20,000 years ago, allowing for much larger
populations. This larger population enables more diversity and further
complexity.

------
natrius
It's painful to see so many intelligent people unable or unwilling to analyze
the effects their actions cause. If you block ads on sites you enjoy without
communicating with the producers of that site, you are lowering the
probability that sites you enjoy will continue to be produced. There are
several ways to mitigate this effect if you don't like ads:

1) Pay for a subscription.

2) If no subscription is offered, ask for one to be offered.

3) If you'd simply like less offensive ads, ask for less offensive ads.

Taking actions that in sum lower the probability of things you like being
produced in the future is incredibly stupid.

 _"The internet is also a wonderful thing. FIRST a person or company puts a
lot of information somewhere that everyone can read it effortlessly for free,
and THEN they sometimes expect me to look at their ads. And I can simply
choose not to._ "

Ars Technica doesn't expect you to look at their ads. They expect you to
render their ads or pay for a subscription. If you choose to do neither of
those, you are a parasite.

~~~
rimantas
Do you realize, that not blocking the ads but simply ignoring them just pushes
"the hurt" down the chain? In this debate let's not forget the whole point of
advertising—to sell some product. So someone pays money for ads, some site
gets them, maybe for clicks, maybe for just views. The point is that if I
see/click on the ad but don't buy the product advertized then site owner
profits on acciunt of ad buyer. So what's next—the urge to feel guilty if you
don't buy everythig you saw an ad for? It is about time to end this obsession
with ads as the only way to monetize…

~~~
dandelany
Sorry, I don't buy it. Advertisers do not expect to get a purchase for every
view, they're just trying to get your attention so they can pitch you their
business idea. If they're able to get you to listen, and you think that the
advertiser's service adds value to your life, you might pay for it. If not,
your lack of a purchase is a statement to the business that, yes, you
understand their service, but it's not helpful to you. If everyone does this,
the advertiser's business model probably isn't very good, just like a brick-
and-mortar store that lots of people walk through without buying anything.
This is the way business works, if you can't get a profitable number of people
interested enough to spend money, your business fails.

OTOH, every time you load an Ars page without loading the ad, you cost them
money and deny them revenue. This time, Ars is the business, and you're
confirming that their service provides value in your life, but you're refusing
to pay the cost that goes along with this benefit: allowing an ad to load.
It's definitely not stealing, but it doesn't seem that far off to me.
Comparing this to "hurting" businesses by just not being interested in the
product they provide seems ludicrous.

------
zb
Ars Technica: "I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of
stealing, or is immoral, or unethical..."

This guy (first sentence, no less): "There's an interesting article on Ars
Technica about how blocking ads is somehow unethical..."

Give me a break.

~~~
briancarper
The article starts off saying that ad-blocking is not unethical, but then goes
on to strongly imply that it is. e.g.

 _I think in some ways the Internet and its vast anonymity feeds into a
culture where many people do not think about the people, the families, the
careers that go into producing a website._

And:

 _And anyway, my point still stands: if you like this site you shouldn't block
ads._

These sound like ethical statements to me. I may be reading more into the
language of the article than is warranted, but that's how I read it: "Don't
block ads because it hurts people, hurts businesses, and is therefore wrong to
do."

~~~
ErrantX
I think they can say they feel it borders on unethical (which is the
impression I got from it). Along the lines of: "ok so you can block our ads,
but that's a bit sucky guys :("

On the topic of your article (I assume it's yours?):

 _I pay for a book, and then I read the book start-to-finish with no ads, no
distractions. A few pages at the back maybe, but I can ignore those. Books are
nice._

I assume you can see the difference here?

In terms of forcing you too look at the ads. I dont think the ars article
tries to imply that either. They are saying they would appreciate it if you
looked at their ads. Please.

I dont know if you have seen the ars site with ads but they are one I
personally unblock: they aren't particularly in your face, are generally
aesthetically pleasing and I also like their content (some of the best on the
web). Encouraging that approach is a plus IMO.

 _If I had to generate revenue to keep my sites going, I would find a way
other than advertising to do it. Or I'd shut them down._

Seems a "shoot yourself in the foot" scenario. Chances are people wouldn't
actually pay monetary cost for your content - people hate doing that
generally. Adverts are "zero cost" to a consumer :) most are happy to swap
free content for a few adverts.

Why is it unethical, as your seemingly suggesting, to do that? :)

~~~
briancarper
Yes, it's my blog post. (I would hesitate to call it an article.) Advertising
is unethical insofar as it's manipulative and dishonest and invasive. Even if
not unethical, it's highly annoying and aesthetically displeasing. Most people
probably are OK with ads, but I'm not, so I wouldn't run ads on my own site.

I looked at the ads on Ars briefly, both animated Flash ads, one for razor
blades and the other I couldn't even tell what it was selling. I admit to
being very emotional about this, and I can understand how some people can
tolerate these, but I can't.

I'm uncertain I see your point about books. Are you asking why I can ignore
the ads in the back of books, but not ignore the ones on websites? Because
it's possible to read the book start to finish without any knowledge
whatsoever that the ads exist. It's trivial to ignore them. If the ads on
websites were all relegated to some page I had to deliberately navigate to,
that'd be similar.

~~~
MichaelGG
I think the point about books was "I pay for a book".

~~~
ErrantX
Yes that was the point.

Books have no ads in because it's paid for.

~~~
copper
Books do advertise, though in a much more tasteful manner: What would you call
the one-page blurbs that contain a listing of other books by the author, and
maybe even teaser chapters of other books that trade paperbacks contain?

------
isleyaardvark
"If I had to generate revenue to keep my sites going, I would find a way other
than advertising to do it. Or I'd shut them down."

He makes it sound easy. As though there weren't a multitude of websites facing
the same problem with covering their operating costs.

TV before cable faced a similar dilemma. Anyone could access it, but how do
you pay for it? Ads did. Cable TV came along with commercial-free channels,
but the consumer would pay for those directly. That solution has been
discussed with some websites, and it's generally ill-received (e.g. NYT,
Hulu).

I think ads can work, I wish they were done better in many cases. What I won't
do is criticize them for their business model without offering a suggestion of
my own.

~~~
petercooper
A key here is that Ars _is_ trying to find another way - their $50/year
subscriptions. See <http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/>

Clearly not enough people value what they do enough to warrant paying $50 a
year (I don't, but I only go on their site a few times a year and am totally
cool with seeing the ads so I consider it great value).

------
Malcx
_By contrast, books (for example) are awesome. I pay for a book, and then I
read the book start-to-finish with no ads_

Thats the issue, you paid money for the book, it's the business model the
author used to make writing the book worthwhile.

Historically the Internet doesn't seem to support content producers this way.

~~~
Tichy
Then remind me again, why don't the advertising sites just block people with
ad blockers?

~~~
jimmyjim
You know, amidst the ad-block debate today, I actually see an opportunity ripe
for a start-up.

A system that lets willing participants opt out of ad-viewship for direct
micropayments. Wait a second, I think what I'm describing is close to the new
'Flattr' -- but still not quite _it_. Let the users choose between
micropayments or ad-viewership.

~~~
Groxx
I'd _love_ micropayments. The problem currently is that there's no good way to
do them, as there are no microtransactions that aren't just paying into the
transaction-manager's pockets.

* looks at flattr __* will have to poke into that.

edit: why not a combination? Micro-pay at a minimum value (say a couple cents)
to get no ads. Click more than once to add more payment % to that site.

------
petercooper
_Stop making the world a garish and hideous place to live by flooding it with
ads._

There are people so _soft_ that they consider the world a "hideous place to
live" because of some advertising? There are people who can barely eat each
day without getting so offended by a few commercials.

 _It so happens that advertisements are devastating to my well-being._

This is crazy talk. Is it even possible to argue against someone who resorts
to saying they get "very emotional" when seeing any sort of advertising or
that advertising "devastates" their well being? Is he scared of animal
crackers as well?

~~~
briancarper
I use hyperbole to emphasize a point. I don't cry myself to sleep when I see
an ad, no. Sometimes I become mildly annoyed. Life is generally OK.

Likewise, ad-blocking isn't really "devastating" the internet, is it?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Speaking for myself, it's very difficult to take you seriously when you use
hyperbole to this extreme. Let's be completely honest here: you wrote it this
way because you knew it would get more of a reaction and people wouldn't just
ignore it, like they would have if you had written "It mildly annoys me." In
other words, you changed your messaging to fit the market and get the results
you wanted from people through emotional manipulation. Sound familiar?

~~~
briancarper
No, I wrote it this way because I do feel strongly about it. I used the word
"devastated" as a play on the title of the other article. I'm not
"devastated", but I do feel strongly enough about this issue to alter my
lifestyle, for example (e.g. avoiding TV and radio, which I very much wish I
was able to enjoy).

I expect some people will agree and some disagree with what I wrote. I enjoy
the discussion, but I don't get anything else out of it. I didn't have any
notion that I'd convince anyone of anything. It was not an attempt to
manipulate anyone. Not a conscious attempt anyways. Certainly not an attempt
to manipulate people into giving me money, so I think the analogy doesn't
hold.

However I may be wrong about this, it may be that my language is overboard in
the way you say. Thanks for some food for thought.

------
blhack
I really don't understand this sentiment. If you don't like the ads, stop
using the site.

There is a coffee shop in Tempe, AZ that I very very rarely go to. Why?
Because the wifi there is horrible. It's slow; there are too many people there
using pandora and not enough bandwidth to go around.

Would it be appropriate for me to whine about this while continuing to go
there?

When using a website (or any service) you are basically choosing to endure a
bit of inconvenience (spending money, or viewing ads) in exchange for
something you want (coffee, content). I get that people want to skip the first
part, but I don't get how they think that could ever work.

------
NZ_Matt
"If I had to generate revenue to keep my sites going, I would find a way other
than advertising to do it. Or I'd shut them down."

Easier said than done.

------
mbrubeck
While the arguments about ethics and morality are relevant, I prefer to focus
on the implicit challenge: Can more publishers find ways to make money from
ad-free content?

Adblock is like Napster. People want the content; the vast majority of
publishers only have one business model; a lot of consumers doesn't like the
price they're being asked for the benefit they're getting, and many of them
are willing to take the content without paying.

There are always people who won't pay no matter what - in the music world,
filesharing is still around. But a lot of people started paying for music
again when Amazon and Apple and eMusic changed the price structure to
something they were willing to pay.

There are a few sites like LiveJournal and MetaFilter that have ad-free
options for paid users. Maybe this is a small niche and will never be big
business. But maybe there are a lot more user who would pay to support ad-free
content - if the price is right.

------
thinkbohemian
What if someone made a browser plugin where every time an you visited a
website it gave that website 1/1000th of a cent (and took 1/1000th of a cent
out of your paypal/google-checkout/etc. account), and in exchange that website
saw the plugin and served you a version with no ads. How many people would
choose to use this plugin?

~~~
gizmo
I would.

Of course, every website in the world would have to support it and
micropayments don't work, so... it's not realistic.

~~~
thinkbohemian
You don't have to get _every_ website to support it, just the big name
advertisers. If the money went straight to adwords... that covers 80% of web
real estate.

------
moron4hire
Profit is not wrong. Profit is not screwing someone. Any freely contracted
trade results in a net benefit for _both_ parties. It has to by definition, or
else it wouldn't be entered.

When someone says ads are "screwing them over", I have to laugh and wonder
what kind of life that person leads that annoying ads are considered an
atrocity. If you want to see being "screwed over", look no further than our
tax code. Our tax code is a system where one does not own 40% of their life,
where there is an explicit understanding that anyone above a certain income
level is not going to get out of it what they pay into it, where there has
become a rational expectation that the money will largely -- to the order of
90% -- be wasted on bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. In all of the
battlefields of life, you choose _online advertisements_ to rail against?
Hell, give Sally Struthers a dollar a day already.

~~~
JabavuAdams
> It has to by definition, or else it wouldn't be entered.

This is Econ 101 dogma. I'm surprised you can write this without examining it
further. People are not rational actors. That's why advertising works.

What's particularly interesting about your using this argument is that
advertising exists precisely to manipulate the non-rational decision making of
consumers.

Once we realize that humans in general are wired such that they make certain
cognitive mistakes again, and again, we have to modify our understanding of a
"freely contracted trade".

A trade where I take advantage of your human nature to encourage you to make a
decision that is in my interest is not truly freely-entered.

With respect to your tax rant ... you should know that people respond more to
what is annoying or vivid than to longer term considerations.

Ads are a low-grade but constant irritation, whereas I make enough money that
taxes are just some numbers on paper.

~~~
moron4hire
Wow, I had no idea that human beings were such simple creatures that they
could be compelled to purchase goods and services against their best interests
by a simple flashing picture.

While advertising is primarily persuasive (there is still a significant
informative portion of advertising), there's nothing wrong with being
persuasive. You're attempting to be persuasive with your replies in this
thread. If being persuasive is being unethically manipulative, then we had
better stop all debate right now.

~~~
JabavuAdams
> Wow, I had no idea that human beings were such simple creatures that they
> could be compelled to purchase goods and services against their best
> interests by a simple flashing picture

People's moment to moment interests often differ from their stated long-term
interests. If this were untrue, impulse purchases would be impossible. How do
you explain impulse purchases? How do you explain people who "want to lose
weight", yet eat an extra snack that they know they shouldn't eat.

Notice that I didn't write "compelled", anywhere. That's your choice of words,
and it creates a straw-man argument. "Enticed" would be closer to the mark.

Let's examine this claim of yours that "there's nothing wrong with being
persuasive". Persuasion doesn't exist by itself. One tries to persuade someone
of something. Considering persuasion alone, without considering the context is
not very deep thinking.

If I try to persuade you to believe something that is untrue, or that is
likely not in your best interest, then actually, there is something wrong with
that persuasion.

I'm arguing here, not for the sake of arguing, but to persuade you of
something that I believe is true. While many advertisers may believe their own
claims, many do not. Furthermore, many who believe their own claims do so out
of a failure to question them with the same rigour as they might question a
position they disagree with.

Going meta, the pattern I see in your response is that you take what I wrote
to an absurd extreme, and then point out the absurdity of (your
interpretation) of my argument. What do you think of this?

------
adammichaelc
"The idea that I have a moral obligation to stare at an advertisment, the
thought I have an ethical obligation to voluntarily annoy myself for the sake
of a company's profits... it would be hilarious if it wasn't so repugnant."

The author seems to be saying that he is entitled to take from the creator of
content without having any obligation to give something in return. I believe
that this misses one of the most basic principles of our economy - namely the
idea of a value-exchange. You get, you give. I believe it's morally wrong to
get, get, get, and not be willing to give.

No, he has no obligation to stare at an advertisement, but if he's not willing
to stare at the ad he should look at other ways to compensate the creator of
content or else not feel entitled to view the content.

Not that it matters, but the author's post is obviously link-bait also.

~~~
zacharypinter
I think the author is trying to say ask if people should treat the cat-and-
mouse game between businesses and consumers with the same respect as exchanges
between individuals. I agree it's morally questionable to "get, get, get, and
not be willing to give", however, how many companies do you expect to think
that way when dealing with consumers?

------
Tichy
OK, a thought experiment: what about an ad blocker that downloads the ad, but
doesn't display it? Because the argument seems to be that it is not necessary
to look at the ad, only to download it, so that the site get's paid.

I am pretty sure such an downloading ad blocker would be considered a kind of
click fraud.

~~~
Groxx
Well, any CSS `display: none` trick does this. I've been using it for years in
my own minor-tweaks, because hiding via CSS with a user stylesheet is _easy_
compared to hacking something like AdBlock.

~~~
Tichy
Not so sure, I guess browsers have become smarter. I don't think they
generally load images that are invisible. At least I seem to remember having
experienced that, don't remember the exact circumstances, though.

~~~
Groxx
Looking at webkit's inspector, at least, they are still downloaded. At least
with my use, but I've only ever hidden entire divs.

------
colah
You know, I'd like to not block adds. I really don't want to. But some sites
make me.

I didn't block them until a few months a go. But there were some adds that
were just so obnoxious. The worst were these ones that played really loud
sounds -- they made me keep my speakers mute, because I didn't want my
computer to spontaneously start playing music and wake people up.

One day I was just utterly fed up. I went to Mozilla's site, downloaded an
add-blocker, set it to the default settings, and voila! Everything was much
nicer.

I'm going to reinstall my OS soon -- I find using apt-get to upgrade break
things -- and I'll use the Internet without an add-blocker for a few days. If
things are as bad as they were, I'll use one again. Maybe try and find a list
that only blocks obnoxious adds, though.

------
ig1
Ars article was about how when they blocked the ad-blockers people complained.

If you have the views espoused in this article you should have no problem
using an ad blocker which tells the web-server that it's blocking ads and
leaves it's up to the website whether it chooses to return you content sans-
advertising.

If you're using an ad blocker that specifically misleads the website into
thinking ads are being viewed when they're not, then that's clearly unethical.

Imagine if you asked someone for a favour and they asked you for a favour in
return. And then they did what you wanted but you only pretended to do what
they wanted. That's exactly the same situation as this.

------
bjelkeman-again
I rather like Ars. The content is a bit varied in quality, but I do have a
look at it most days. The best content makes me reminisce about Byte Magazine.

The ads are annoying. The alternative is $50/year. It just feels like quite a
big sum of money when the extra benefits are not that interesting. $50/year
that also gives me a good daily iPad edition, with articles I can save,
without ads and full archive access may start being in the right realm for me.

Maybe I should just pony up the $50 to experiment, I did save it on my dropped
newspaper subscription recently. :)

~~~
gizmo
$50 a year is the price of 2 books (or one more expensive technical book).
Every year I buy at least a dozen books I don't read. So I wouldn't say that
$50 is an unreasonable amount if they content is good.

------
ShardPhoenix
This discussion reminds me that the only site where I haven't minded the ads
so much (and I think I might have even bought something from an ad there
once), is Penny Arcade. The reason is that they carefully choose ad campaigns
to be tasteful and only advertise stuff that they themselves consider worthy
of purchase. I still don't like them enough to turn off adblock specifically
for that site though, so I guess that counts as collateral damage.

------
DennisP
The solution seems obvious. Run adblock, and also run a background script that
reads your browser history and hits the same sites, ads included, without
displaying anything. You get your clean Internet and as far as the advertisers
can tell, they're getting their "impressions."

------
betageek
Wish I had time to build an AdFundedSiteBlocker - extension for Firefox that
doesn't allow you to read the content on a site if it has ads on it.

------
zackattack
I think that advertising is indeed devastating to our collective well being,
but not for the miserly reasons you enumerated. I think that advertising
conditions us to associate happiness with things or circumstances external,
rather than from a place inside ourselves. Which is fundamentally fucked.

To the author: I think that if you cut the paranoia, you would actually be
wealthier in spirit as well as material "net worth".

------
rogermugs
if ads make wonderful software free (twitterrific 4 iphone), then sign me up.

~~~
zacharypinter
I think twitterrific is a great example of (relatively) unobtrusive
advertising. They've pulled it off well.

------
SilianRail
Advertising = Jobs

~~~
scrod
Imprisoning people for nonviolent crimes = Jobs

~~~
Willie_Dynamite
Wait, are you arguing that violent crimes are the only ones people should go
to prison for? What about say, Bernie Madoff?

~~~
rick888
"Imprisoning people for nonviolent crimes = Jobs"

No. He is saying that pot should be legalized.

It's funny because I have heard so many pro-pot legalization people that our
prisons shouldn't be filled with people that do drugs. I have not heard of one
person that is in prison for personal consumption of drugs. Most cops won't
even bother.

The people in prison are the dealers.

------
detcader
The real culprit isn't people blocking ads; it's the free-market nature of
internet economy that allows companies/websites to rely solely on
advertisement, causing internet ads to be so populated.

