
Mozilla’s newest app perfectly captures the ethical dilemma of ad-blocking - Libertatea
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/08/mozillas-newest-app-perfectly-captures-the-ethical-dilemma-of-ad-blocking/
======
neves
I really love to be called anti-ethical by advertisers. Last time I watched TV
I saw ads that told me: to drink unhealthy sugar beverages, that my son would
be ashamed if I have an old and cheap car, that I should use a financial
service that would give a terrible return on investment, that happiness is the
same than buying things, alcohol is to only way to have fun.

Sure, I have no ethics because I want to control what my computer executes and
display.

~~~
chrisBob
I can't imagine feeling so entitled that I would argue that people _owe me_
web and TV content. I think that your option if you don't like the advertising
that is supporting a service is to not use that service. If you feel strongly
about it you could even tell the station/site the reason you are no longer
using their service.

I really don't understand the argument that "I don't like how they want me to
pay for this service; therefore it is ok to steal it"

~~~
muddi900
So you like watch ads when they come on? You never change the channel?

~~~
neves
It would be anti-ethical! You shouldn't even go to the bathroom:-)

------
oldmanjay
There is no ethical dilemma on the user side. No web user guarantees making
any particular request, and no one is owed the viability of a business model.

The ethics of defending the descent of the ad system into such destructive
behavior is an interesting discussion, perhaps.

~~~
srameshc
The very incentive of web advertising has incentivized creation of massive
knowledge content and created platforms to do so, for example Stackoverflow.
To totally disregard it will be a bad decision and it would eventually drive
everyone to pay per view/create way.

~~~
hackuser
> it would eventually drive everyone to ...

... a new business model. I have no problem with that.

~~~
srameshc
But I have a problem with that. I don't want to live in a walled garden.

~~~
oldmanjay
Then you are free to subject yourself to ads. If I don't feel I owe these
companies a successful business model, then I certainly don't feel I owe you
successful companies using that model.

~~~
srameshc
And I am. I am rooting for the existing, the new and unknown who are adding
value to the internet and who are helping give voices to many in the world.

------
iaskwhy
"Whomever you think is to blame for the sorry state of Web browsing, content
blockers have a kind of ratcheting effect: Once you turn one on, chances are
you won't see the kind of high-quality ads that might convince you to turn it
off again. It also involves the risk that you'll miss whatever advertisers or
publishers come up with to make the Web better again.", said no one ever.

~~~
ryandrake
That "ratcheting effect" is by design.

Similarly, anti-virus software has a "ratcheting effect" in that once you
install them, you don't get to see the kind of high-quality viruses and
trojans that might convince your computer to encrypt all your files or give up
your bank passwords.

Installing an ad blocker has become another one of those "hygiene" steps that
you do whenever you set up a new PC: Install Anti-virus, install OS-provided
updates, install ad-blocker.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>install OS-provided updates

Windows is working pretty hard to reverse this. At the very least you now have
to scan through the updates to uncheck the telemetric ones.

------
drdeca
The freedom to run what software one wills has priority over the wishes of the
website that their ads be viewed.

Viewing ads is then, not a payment, but a donation. And it is generally one
that I am willing to make. But I reserve the right to block whatever ads I
choose, provided that I have not agreed to do otherwise.

Note:the freedom to run what software one wills does not have priority over
everything. I am only talking about this thing.

------
meesterdude
Advertisers brought this on themselves. With their ceaseless push to put ads
everywhere, even within articles, this is what you get.

Advertising isn't inherently evil; it can be useful. It can be artistic. It
can be educational. those are qualities that make ads appealing.

But if you interrupt me from what I was trying to do, it doesn't matter what
the ad is. that's just rude.

Humor is a goto for advertisers, and maybe that works for some people, but for
a lot of people it just rolls off.

Tide laundry detergent could show me an ad for getting a stain out using
vinegar and baking soda. But instead everything needs to push people towards
their products. Their products are the be-all end all. buy buy buy.

And advertisers need to be more selective of who they advertise to and how.
The more verzion ads I see, the more I despise them. And if i'm watching a
bunch of videos and you show me the same exact ad every time, over the course
of weeks, you're a fucking idiot.

In short, this is a good thing. It's a process of evolution. Maybe they'll get
their shit together, or invent something worse.

------
eCa
The title and first paragraph are somewhat at odds with each other. Copy-
pasting a bit leads to this:

    
    
        > Mozilla’s newest app perfectly captures the ethical dilemma of blocking
        > the parts of the web that slow down your Internet, spy on your online 
        > activities and generally make Web-surfing a tedious experience.
    

There is an ethical dilemma, but it is not on the user side.

------
sarciszewski
Imagine these arguments about ad-blockers, but instead being leveraged against
spam filters on your email inbox.

If you don't think you have an ethical obligation to read your spam emails,
then you also don't have one to view advertisements.

Also, nobody should be able to force you to run their code. The publisher's
rights end where your computer begins.

------
dikaiosune
Unless I'm mistaken, Focus is specifically a _tracking_ blocker, right? As in,
it's only a content blocker insofar as the advertisers are collecting data
about visitors in addition to selling their page views? I really don't see the
problem, and it's hard to take sites like WaPo seriously when editorializing
about users trying to circumvent their ethically dubious revenue streams. I
get that the whole media is in a crunch right now to figure out what to do
about online advertising, but whitewashing the privacy invasions isn't
helping.

------
BinaryIdiot
It's so frustrating seeing people talk about ad blocking as some ethical
issue. If your revenue model depends on the honor system (that a user will
load what you send them) then it's inherently flawed and will eventually
founder.

It's time to move to a new model and stop trying to cling onto the past by
calling users of such tools unethical.

~~~
212d1d
>It's so frustrating seeing people talk about ad blocking as some ethical
issue.

How often do you hear your family talk about the ethical implications about ad
blocking? What I mean is, how often do people with no dog in the fight talk
about ad blocking ethics? For me, never. Of course websites that depend on
advertising dollars are going to complain about the public blocking their
advertising dollars.

------
cryoshon
What ethical dilemma? If you want to make money from me as a visitor to a
website, create a paywall so I can decide to find the content elsewhere for
free, or subscribe to you if I really, absolutely can't do without it. I will
tell you now: I have been on the internet for my entire life and clicked less
than a dozen ads in that time, most of which were pre-2010. I am not the only
one who browses in this way-- hopefully there are millions more.

I block 100% of ads because I detest being hectored by attention-depleting
visual waste. My position is ethical, because it improves my experience
immensely by altering the set of data to reach my eyes that websites decide to
offer to me for free. Once again, if websites or services want to get money
from me, they can ask directly and change the terms of access.

------
mikestew
Just because the Washington Post (who makes their money from...) _says_ there
is an ethical dilemma doesn't make it so. I once tried to make it an ethical
argument, then the sites and advertisers decided they weren't going to take
part in that argument ("'do not track'? Nah, we decided that's not going to
work for us."). Works for me, I'll not have the argument, either.

So, thanks web sites and advertisers, I lose not a minute of sleep as a result
of surfing the web ad-free.

------
randall
Why is there no opt-in ad blocker? "eff these guys i'm blocking their ads." Or
like if your resources go over some threshold they get blocked?

I want to punish bad actors, not all.

~~~
rplnt
Opera used to have opt-in content blocking and I used it for years without any
trouble. I only blocked annoying ads on sites that I visit more than once. Of
course it meant that I disabled whole ad networks sometimes, but that's
entirely their fault. In the end, I was shown many ads while browsing.

That being said, Opera had a proper pop-up blocker and didn't implement every
junk feature from javascript (prevent closing windows, change clipboard, ...).
Disabling js (on per site basis) was two clicks away as well.

With Chrome, you can't really use it without ad blocker. One bad site and you
end up with dozens of new windows, unclosable tabs, ... So the browser itself
is yet another reason why people turn to ad blocking.

~~~
muddi900
Opera 7/8 was way ahead of it's time. The tabbed interface was faster than
Firefox, and better implemented, because Shift+Click opened new tabs, pretty
much how I learned about tabs.

------
arjie
While the interaction between advertisers and consumers is somewhat poisoned
now because of bad actors, I still think there is potential in online
advertising.

In the end, I want to know about things that would interest me (and which I'd
like to pay for), and those selling those things want me to know about them
too. If we do it right, it's in both our interests.

The problem is that it's also in the interest of the guy selling to show me
things I'm not interested in. But if an ad service targets me sufficiently
well, filtering out the nonsense, my life is actually better than otherwise.

------
fulafel
The whole current conversation about this is weird. Why are people acting like
ad blockers are new when iOS, a mobile platform with a small market share,
stops banning them and gets back in line with everyone else?

~~~
tdkl
It's how you get attention to John Doe, who doesn't cares about ad-blocking
until Apple does.

Similarly how this "dilemma" is again rehashed because Mozilla made a content
blocker. Not that about 10 others sprung out since September where the content
blocking support was introduced.

~~~
pitay
That suggests Mozilla is least influenced by the ad serving networks. I like
that.

------
backtoyoujim
I feel no ethical dilemma in dumping ads.

These are ads paid for by corporations that regularly screw people with the
"sorry, I have shareholders to answer to" line.

I have my life to answer to, and it is limited. I owe zero to your cdn.

------
intrasight
With the risk of sounding like a broken record, it's not 'ad blocking' \- it
is 'content blocking'. I wish these articles would just drop the term 'ad
blocking'. There may be a small minority of folk that want to block ads. Most
people want to block 3rd party content and trackers. If a publication needs ad
revenue, they should put the ads in their content - just like a newspaper or
magazine.

~~~
serge2k
Source on that, cause I block ads.

------
frik
WashingtonPost.com serves many ads and consumes too much memory resources -
thanks for crashing my Safari (iPad) while reading the article, a very
unnerving moment.

I still have no Safari adblocker installed, as I believe in ads. But such bad
ads citizens needs a disruption ala Google text-based Ads 10 years ago that
changed the ads landscape.

~~~
frik
Ghostery found:

    
    
      Amazon Associates (Advertising, Affiliate Marketing)
      ChartBeat (Analytics)
      Criteo (Advertising, Search)
      DoubleClick (Advertising)
      Effective Measure (Analytics, Analytics)
      Krux Digital (Beacons)
      MediaMath (Advertising)
      Moat (Advertising)
      Omniture - Adobe Analytics (Beacons)
      OpenX (Advertising)
      Outbrain (Widgets)
      Polar Mobile (Advertising)
      Sailthru Horizon (Beacons)
      ScoreCard Research Beacon (Beacons, Analytics)
      Twitter Button (Widgets, Social)
    

Way too much "Analytics" in the list.

116 requests; onload: 7.77s

Chrome DevTools timing said:

2.71s Scripting; 636ms Rendering; 210ms Painting

Dozens of reflows are visible in the flame graph! Poor mobile devices, such
websites eat battery like there's no tomorrow. Summary: One hell of a page.

------
AdmiralAsshat
So did the WP guy literally just pound out this article in the last hour, or
did Mozilla inform the press about Focus before the announcement went live?

------
logn
Stats on this article...

With uBlock turned on and JS blocked: 65 requests, 2,015 KB, 1.73 seconds

Without blocking: 391 requests, 7,354 KB, 54.57 seconds

In each case I can read the article. The latter case uses 3.5x bandwidth.

I hope news sites find that the reason their print ads fetch more money is
because it's prestigious to have a newspaper ad. Web ads are junky. Sites
should vet ads themselves or use a reputable firm and work with advertisers to
place tasteful, inline, plain html ads.

------
homulilly
Ad blocking isn't just about improving "user experience." Current ad providers
are so widely negligent and irresponsible with the content they allow on their
networks that they are a tremendous security risk these days. It takes a truly
incredible amount of hypocrisy or ignorance to rely on a known malware vector
for your income and then accuse people of being "unethical" for protecting
themselves.

------
scotty79
There's no social contract between me and people who put up things on the
internet. I never entered any. They put up there some stuff for consumption
and I will consume it or not whatever they serve in whole or in part solely on
my terms. I have my own set of terms and conditions and any site I visit
automatically agrees to it because it's no more stupid wishful thinking as the
other way around.

------
sysread
The "conflict" described here is a result of unchecked greed in advertising as
they worked to grab user focus at all costs. Had they behaved in a more
disciplined manner, ad blockers would not be so popular or would work more
like Disconnect.me and Mozilla's new product. Instead, they will have to earn
the chance to be seen again the hard way.

------
wang_li
As long as websites act like they are the victims when ad networks are
compromised and serve malware to visitors, I see no reason anyone should feel
bad about blocking content. It's simple prudence to not download malicious
software to your computer.

------
marssaxman
There is no ethical dilemma. It's my machine and my choice.

Publishers get to make choices about their machines, not mine. If they don't
want to give me stuff for free, then they should stop giving me stuff for
free!

------
ksk
I fully realize that advertising, whether is direct, indirect or second-order
is what keeps companies in business and keep paying us. I'm fine with ads as
long as they're static images and/or text. When you lose me is when websites
keep loading up script after script of some CPU hogging bullcrap that tanks my
browser perf; then we have a problem. Google is bad when it comes to this, but
not as bad as the Taboolas and Perions who are so in your face that all you
want to do is block these idiots from ever sending a byte over your network.

------
serge2k
> Once you turn one on, chances are you won't see the kind of high-quality ads
> that might convince you to turn it off again

I don't understand this idea that we will see "high quality" ads and actually
enjoy them.

The problem is it seems like advertisers are still trying to cram in more and
more and more. Ads that block content, interstitials, ads all over the page to
the point where clicking anywhere is a risk.

I agree that adapt or die isn't fair. Neither is cramming ads down your users
throats.

------
theworstshill
Looks like ad conmen just got disrupted even more.

------
scotty79
What's up with the recent onslaught of ads for scams like "One easy trick to
...'?

Why would any ads publishing network destroy its own value by publishing such
criminal crap?

It's like you have a forest and you burn it because somebody paid you to make
a lot of smoke. You are destroying your business and helping poison the
environment at the same time.

------
pmoriarty
Advertising is a cancer.

~~~
ArtDev
There is nothing wrong with text-based ads.

------
cromwellian
I'll be contrarian here, since there are many people claiming the solution is
paywalls (which people also whine about). (and BTW, the opinion that follows
has nothing to do with my employer, Google, and their business model)

I grew up poor, my family didn't have disposable income for buying media.
Everything I got, came from ad supported radio, TV, or public libraries. I
used to call into radio stations to ask them to play a song, and then wait for
hours so I could tape the songs and create tapes. Our family did not have
cable, and though we had VHS, we often didn't rent movies, but rather used the
VHS like a Tivo.

There are billions of people in the world who now have access to billions of
Web documents that were paid for by advertisers, many of whom probably didn't
even get their moneys worth. If the Web originated as a paywall, it would have
never grown to the size and usage rates that exists today.

The first crawlers would have never arisen if anyone wanting to built a search
index had to strike deals to access content for indexing.

Paywalls raise transaction barriers that ads do not. Ads make you pay in
bandwidth and time, but for much of the internet's life, those were tradeoffs
that were much easier to make than having to break out a credit card everytime
you saw an article that MIGHT interest you. Paywalls also make centralizing vs
federated/decentralized content more economically efficient.

How many of you have searched for scientific papers only to be pissed that
they're behind some Springer-Verlag paywall?

Do we want to live in a world of walls, or a world of open highways with
billboards? That's the choice being made here. And the scorn being heaped on
ads is the luxury and privilege of living in a time when most of the content
on the Web and most of the infrastructure costs have already been sunk and
payed for by advertisers in years past. We live in a Web of excess now,
forgetting the hundreds of billions sunk into datacenters and network
infrastructure and content creation that came before. Who paid for that, and
would it have even existed if the entire thing was like Cable TV premium
channels?

I don't really want the Web to turn into a giant Apple Store, where every
link, I must face the cognitive burden of paying for it before I know that I
even want it. We need to solve the issues that ads create with respect to
bandwidth hogging and privacy, but I think paywalls, even micro-payment
paywalls, impose too much of a transaction cost and cognitive burden for the
free exchange of knowledge.

~~~
dragonwriter
Its not a choice between a world of paywalls and a world of ads -- closed,
for-paying-users services are going to exist whether or not ad-based services
also exist. And, open services without distinct ads (which may themselves _be_
ads, on some level) that are paid for by someone other than the direct user
are going to exist. The real question is in what circumstances, and to what
extent, are services with intrusive ads disrupting the main content acceptable
alternatives to those other two models, not an exclusive choice of a world
with one model or a world with one of the other models.

> I don't really want the Web to turn into a giant Apple Store, where every
> link, I must face the cognitive burden of paying for it before I know that I
> even want it.

 _Life_ is that way: even with "free with ads" content, you are accepting a
cost for the content before you can be certain that the benefit justifies it.
(Heck, there's an opportunity cost even with "free without ads" content.)

If you just mean the friction of active choice with each click, well, even in
a payment model you could create a system with configurable passive thresholds
and lumped periodic payments where the cognitive burden of an active purchase
decision was avoided for people who preferred to do so.

~~~
cromwellian
Yes, there's an opportunity cost for content, but different people have
different marginal utility for their dollars vs their time.

For children, or the unemployed, the marginal utility of a dollar is quite
high, but free time is cheap.

Likewise, the unauthenticated, un-paid-for Web has permitted frictionless
composition and repurpose of content without the need to 'do deals'. Beyond
just the consumer issue, a non-Ad supported web would have severely limited
its evolution, by forcing content to require authentication.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Likewise, the unauthenticated, un-paid-for Web has permitted frictionless
> composition and repurpose of content without the need to 'do deals'.

Yes, but...

> Beyond just the consumer issue, a non-Ad supported web would have severely
> limited its evolution, by forcing content to require authentication.

Having no ads would have eliminated one of the several means of funding
content that doesn't require authentication -- but ads aren't the only
mechanism that doesn't require authentication -- and, yes, any limitation in
available models would have limited the ways in which the web _could_ evolve,
by changing the opportunity space.

