
The ethics of modern web ad-blocking - kyleslattery
http://www.marco.org/2015/08/11/ad-blocking-ethics
======
RodericDay
What I really can't understand, that permeates this whole discussion, is
plenty of people that try to sell the idea that ads let us have content "for
free", and that all we have to tolerate is "a little annoyance".

It's insane. If companies are buying ad-space, it's because they expect to get
more business in return. This means that someone out there is being influenced
by said ads, so that if the content cost X to put up online (hosting, funding
its creation), someone is paying X+(ad company overhead) for it.

If these costs are being borne evenly, then it's complete societal waste. We
could pay X for the content, and not incur the overhead. If these costs are
not borne evenly, and some people are paying for the consumption of more
disciplined people, it's probably contributing to terrible cycles of poverty
(ie: some kid spending money on fancy new shoes he doesn't need and can't
afford is paying for a well-paid tech-users YouTube habits, because it preys
on their lack of education). Either way it's terrible.

Advertising isn't free. Insofar it works, for some people, it's basically
coercive via psychology and simulated peer pressure.

~~~
reasonishy
Advertising is the method most people use to discover new products/services.

Of course these days the line is often blurred. So half the posts on HN could
be adverts, and you wouldn't really know about it. In fact lots of them are
adverts.

But just think about how the world would work without advertising. How would
you know there's a star wars movie coming out? How would you know about new
products and services you might be interested in buying.

I buy quite a few magazines, and one of the reasons I buy them is for the
adverts, which tell me about companies who provide things I might be
interested in.

For example, I buy a bee-keeping magazine, which has many adverts related to
bee-keeping. That's valuable. I buy a pig magazine, which has adverts for pig
arks, pig tags, weaners, etc etc.

Good advertising is a net win for everyone. It provides us information about
things we might like. Just because there's _some_ bad advertising on the
internet, it doesn't mean all advertising is useless.

What is the alternative model to advertising on the internet? The fact is,
that most websites are supported by advertising, and if that goes away, so do
the websites unless some other magical income model replaces it.

~~~
unprepare
>Advertising is the method most people use to discover new products/services.

Do you have a source for that?

>How would you know there's a star wars movie coming out?

By being interested in science fiction movies, being part of a community of
people with like interests, theater showtimes, etc.

Why do i need to know 6 months beforehand that a star wars movie will
eventually come out?

Why would i need to know any sooner than a week before the release date?

>How would you know about new products and services you might be interested in
buying.

By having an interest in buying them, and then doing research regarding which
product will best fit my needs.

>which tell me about companies who provide things I might be interested in

Or do the advertisements give you an itch and a tool to scratch it?

>which has many adverts related to bee-keeping. That's valuable

In what way?

Are you incapable of finding a new bee-keeping related product without first
seeing an advertisement?

Can you not google the item you need and then compare the options amongst each
other?

Can you not simply search on amazon or some bee-keeping friendly retailer?

Are you not part of a community of bee-keepers who you can ask for
recommendations about products?

If you've ever heard of:

Costco

Krispy Kreme

Kiehls

Spanx

Lululemon

Rolls Royce

Zara

Jiffy muffin mix

NO-AD sunscreen

Then you've disproven you're entire argument, as those are all brands that
have $0 advertising budget, and do no advertising.

~~~
stevesearer
In my industry advertising is indeed a key way in which office designers find
out about new products.

One form of advertising which is commonly utilized is a yearly trade show
where manufacturers rent showroom space to show off their products to
prospective buyers. This model makes sense because it gets 60,000 people with
purchasing power into the same building to see what products are new and what
the latest design ideas are. There is no hidden agenda here and everyone knows
what is going on.

This is the same basic concept as a magazine or website advertisement where
you try to get a bunch of likeminded people in one industry with purchasing
power to subscribe and read the magazine or website. The advertisements (paper
showrooms space) are used to show cool pictures of new products companies are
selling and now one is fooled by that.

In this industry, manufacturers have brand recognition and a reputation so
seeing an ad for a new office chair by X company is an effective way to
announce to people who already know of and like your brand that you have a new
product.

Hacker News leverages its niche audience to 'advertise' job listings for Y
Combinator funded companies. I could probably find out about those jobs
elsewhere if I were currently looking for a job, but I'm willing to trade
seeing them for using this site. I expect many other people don't mind
advertising when it is tastefully done and on-topic with the website or
magazine they read or are subscribed to.

------
jpmattia
I'm beginning to find the various articles about ad-blocking fatuous, and I
doubt I'm the only one.

Ads served via a centralized vendor can be blocked trivially, and people are
choosing to block them. You can make a whole lot of arguments about ethics, or
you can just admit that it's a broken business model.

Worse, it is becoming apparent that ads increase the attack surface. Failing
to clean that up will cause armies of IT folks to actively work against you.

Maybe the business model is that you're serving ads in a non-centralized way,
or maybe you're serving centralized ads to people with locked-down computers,
but good luck serving blockable ads and relying on the good graces of the
population to unblock your ads out of charity.

~~~
zokier
Do you also think that selling movies is broken business model because movies
can pirated trivially?

Or that free software is broken model because GPL can be violated trivially?

~~~
jpmattia
In principle: If you pirate movies or the GPL, the legal system comes after
you. So no, not completely broken.

But that's my point: Those industries have taken the path of serving the
subsegment of the market that won't break the law/contract. And maybe that's
the answer for website advertising, but adblockers are a one-time install and
look like less effort than pirating (for movies) or obfuscating (for GPL). So
good luck if that's your business model.

------
bediger4000
How is ad blocking an ethical issue? I get to control my computer, at least
until some legislation passes that says I don't.

Even if I don't control my computer entirely, how about my DNS? I have a lot
of the more intrusive domains (tynt, doubleclick, etc) set up as 127.0.0.1 in
my dnsmasq config.

The "whose computer is it anyway" question seems key here. In order to make
advertising possible, we have to take control away from owners. That seems
like a generally bad outcome.

~~~
reasonishy
OK, so the equivalent would be this:

I buy magazines from the wholesaler. I rip out all the adverts. I then sell
them to the public.

I'm acting as a lovely "ad-blocker" for magazines. Is what I'm doing legal or
ethical?

Another argument would be is it ethical to block people who have adblock
installed. In such an arms race, who will win?

~~~
markbnj
I don't think that analogy holds up, since the viewer of a web page is not
reselling the content (which would be the unethical part). It would be more
accurate to ask whether removing the ad pages in magazines you keep for your
own use was ethical. The obvious answer would be: of course.

~~~
Retra
It's even ok to hire someone to rip the ads out for you beforehand.

------
agd
_people aren’t agreeing to write a blank check and give up reasonable
expectations of privacy by clicking a link. They can’t even know what the cost
of visiting a page will be until they’ve already visited it and paid the
price._

This is the crucial point to me. How can I agree to a website's trackers
before I know they exist?

~~~
tremon
This is also what the much-maligned EU cookiewall was intended to address: you
inform visitors about your tracking /before/ you start tracking them.

Though I don't know at which stage that incentive was bungled (other than:
"doomed from the start, because people").

~~~
redml
Correct me if I'm wrong (because I don't live in the EU and can't verify
this), but to comply with the cookie law websites started just displaying "we
use cookies" in the header somewhere and didn't actually change anything.
Meaning its the same as browsing the internet everywhere else you just get
told that this is happening.

~~~
tremon
No correction, that is what happened. But I don't know if that's because the
law was naively constructed, naively interpreted or willfully misinterpreted
because it's easier to implement.

------
clarky07
I never used an ad blocker until the last month or so. Ive made money with
content and ads before and I know it's hard to do. Sadly, things have gotten
absurd lately. Chrome basically slowed my computer to a halt on an almost
daily basis. The performance improvement from using an ad blocker has been
tremendous. So much difference I have a hard time believing it.

As a side bonus I also don't have to deal with auto playing video ads and
popover boxes asking me to subscribe to content I haven't yet had a chance to
see if I like.

~~~
Ntrails
I just installed windows 10, and obviously had to quickly fire up "Edge" to
get chrome/firefox etc.

My mind was blown when I googled a "how to" and went to a PC help page that
started auto playing a video in the sidebar completely unrelated to the topic
I was interested in - simultaneously kind of clashing with the music I was
already listening to.

Seriously? People have been putting up with this? Some 10 minutes later I was
all adblock'd/noscript'd and my internet experience had returned to normal. I
literally haven't experienced that since the days of sodding myspace.

------
mikestew
In my book, it's no longer a question of ethics, at least not directly. Way
back when, we all agreed that if I look at some ads, a web site will let me
view some content. Fair enough, it's a proven model and though I might not
particularly like advertising, I'll trade some eyeballs for some content. Way
back when, maybe it _was_ a question of ethics. But not anymore.

What "we" _didn 't_ agree to was being tracked all over the web, malware being
shoved down the pipe via ads, ignoring "do not track", and all of the other
nefarious things ad networks have been trying to get away with. Ethics have
gone out the window, if ethics ever existed on the side of advertisers. So I
run an ad blocker, and I make no apologies for doing so.

"What about the little guy who pays for hosting with ads?" You mean the
"little guy" who has to scrape couch change to pay for the site that contains
his latest post about artisanal mayonnaise and her latest gadget acquisition?
Yeah, that $100/year for hosting is really going to break her, might not be
able to get next year's Apple Watch on release day.

The big boys and girls like The Verge and what have you? Well, using The Verge
as an example, they could go under tomorrow and IMO the world would be no
poorer, given that they've kind of turned to poo in recent days. I blame the
web advertising model for part of their deterioration, but that's a long
digression. Specific examples aside, what about the sites I like? I pay money
to the sites I like, specifically Ars Technica, NYT, and the Economist (and
some others I'm sure I've forgotten about). Some, like Daring Fireball, use
unobtrusive, single-image ads that I'll occasionally click on because they
interest me, as well as a desire to reward a job well done.

But at the end of the day, the whole thing isn't my problem. If a few bad
actors (or, in reality, a _lot_ of bad actors) want to crawl into my machine
and have their way, I'm blocking all of them. If there's collatoral damage
because of some bad actors, it's not my job to fix it. I did my part and said,
"no, you don't". Don't lay the onus on me to play nice, because you're
berating the wrong party.

~~~
Balgair
[http://www.artofmanliness.com/](http://www.artofmanliness.com/)

This site is a great one to look at in terms of the ad ecosystem. The ads are
(typically) not that bad and very targeted, and the content is fantastic to
the sub-genre of people looking at it. The admin there uses, reviews, and runs
give-aways for products he actually likes and wants to advocate for. True, the
site is never going to make billions or even millioons, but it is enough for
his needs.

The issue is that it takes a lot of work to build that with your community and
ad partners. You have to make a lot of phone calls and write a lot of emails.
You have to have consistently good and timely articles. Your content and
audience have to be managed. Big ad firms do not have the margins to do this
and are forced into blast ads.

Many other commenters here mention that the ad ecosystem is up for a change,
much like pop-ups a decade ago. Perhaps a more curated environment is going to
appear for a little while.

~~~
flavor8
People subscribe to podcasts. Why couldn't people subscribe to his site (for a
trivially small payment) and get access to one new article per week? (Or
access to 50 articles for a set period of time.)

If the content is good, then people will be willing to pay for it. That's how
books work. That's how, for example, wikipedia works. That's how newspapers
work (although of course many have been failing).

~~~
Balgair
I'm not saying the site is perfect, rather, a more appropriate use of ads and
how they are displayed. This is to counter the auto-playing pop-ups you can
never seem to exit from and only mis-click on.

------
qopp
"What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to _well-
founded_ standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do,
usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or
specific virtues." \--
[https://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics....](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics.html)

Kant 1st Imperative -- Violates -- If everyone used Adblock, many websites
would shutdown. I.e. "Adblock is okay because sites can still run if just some
people do it" \-- cannot be universally applied, contradiction

Kant 2st Imperative -- Violates -- You treat website developers as a means to
an end -- to get content, instead of rational human beings who, given a
sufficient outcry against their ads, could change their ad service or offer a
different model.

Utilitarianism -- Violates -- Ad Revenue - Well being of site owner: -Site
Costs / Visitors + Ad Revenue For just you. Well being of you: Site benefit -
time wasted * time value. (Blocking "Ad will play for x seconds" in this
specific ethical system might not violate)

Rule Utilitarianism -- Violates -- Well being of site owners: Cannot make ad
supported sites, current ad supported sites -site cost. Well being of society:
Less websites -- more inefficiency and less units of entertainment good.

Social Contract -- Violates -- People accept ads knowing that others will do
this as well and this supports the site. Another: Site owners create sites
relying on users's ability to see them and thus pay for site creation.

Virtue Ethics -- Violates -- You might feel more shame being in a room with
someone who made a site supported by ads and showing them that you use adblock
then if you were invisible to the site owner.

The systems above are the ethical systems allowed in the book "Ethics for the
Information Age (6th Edition)" by Michael J. Quinn (the list is his, but not
the theories themselves, just mentioning my source to show I'm not cherry-
picking ethical systems)

~~~
fwn
But all those reflexions on the issue are completely determined by the random
assumptions you use in your examples.

Kant 1. Imp: One could deny the disappearance or embrace it. One could see the
new forces leading the web away from ads as something beneficial for society
as a whole.

Utilitarianism: There are many not quantifyable variables in a possible
calculation. Just add seeing ads as exceedingly costly and your utilitarian
argument in favour of adblocking is secured. Same goes for rule
utilitarianism. E.g. Just measure the overall good generated by websites not
by quantity but by quality. Get advertising in your quality metrics as
something that reduces quality.

Social Contract: Spin another social contract: Page owners freely upload their
pages knowing that the web is pull and users will select the resources
displayed. One could argue that forcing them to download ads might violate
this social contract.

Virtue Ethics: Alter the individuals opinion on his adblocking behaviour for
your model. One could argue that there might be shame for someone not to block
ads. (Which is a plausible case for a whole variety of ads out in the web
right now.)

~~~
qopp
Ethics is always a subjective science, but these ethical models provide a fair
and structured approach to looking at it.

Kant 1. Doesn't ask "what's best for society"? It asks about the
"universalizability principle" i.e. "if everyone acts like me is there a
contradiction?". And in this case there is, if you browse an ad-supported site
that could only exist if some people view the ads is a contradiction. You have
to agree that some sites would shut down if everyone used adblock, and thus
the principal stands. It's not about what's best for society if the sites shut
down, just pointing out the ethical contradiction that if everyone acted like
you, everyone _couldn 't_ act like you (at least not always on all sites).

Utilitarianism. You just have to measure the obvious units of good vs units of
bad. Again, it's not like a math proof but you can identify the units of good
vs units of bad. Can you provide an alternate counter proof that is more
obviously correct than my analysis?

Social Contract: I'm talking about the implicit social contract that _exist_
today. Page owners _don 't_ freely upload their page knowing that the web is
pull and users will select the resources displayed. Many page owners aren't
even aware of adblock, at least not all of them.

Basically what you've said is: Movie theater owners free open their doors
knowing that the world is navigable and users will select whether they want to
visit the pay booth or not. Movie theater owners do open their theaters with
this in mind, but they don't intend for their users to skip the pay booth if
they simply don't want to pay. That's not the social contract you take on when
you visit a theater.

In this case, the social contract is stated in actually stated in words you
can read. Just read the terms of service on many websites. They specifically
say you can view the site if you don't block the ads: "you are not permitted
to block the display of ads" \--
[http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml](http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml)

Virtue Ethics: I think this one is pretty verifyable :) Just find someone that
owns a ad supported site and tell them to their face that you use ad block and
you think it would be shameful not to. See how you feel ;)

~~~
ectoplasm
The first step is to just stop feeling guilty about doing what you want with
your own property, and then you don't need to bother with these huge
rationalizations either way.

Would you support a law that made it illegal to run ad-blocking software? Why
or why not?

~~~
qopp
I'm saying _you_ should try and it see if _you_ feel guilty. You might or
might not. What I feel is not relevant since I'm the one trying to make the
point.

They aren't rationalizations, they are accepted standards for analyzing
decisions based on ethical systems.

Also (what you are doing on your own property) only counts when it doesn't
involve another person (the site owner).

"Rationalization a defense mechanism in which controversial behaviors or
feelings are justified and explained in a seemingly rational or logical manner
to avoid the true explanation" \--
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_\(psychology\))

I'm not trying to avoid the true explanation, I'm trying to find the true
explanation :) I'm not trying justify the act after the fact (for myself or
others). Also _not_ using Adblock software is not controversial.

"But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical"
\--[https://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics....](https://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics.html)

I don't believe in making a law because I don't believe in encoding every
single ethical decision into laws. Just because I believe based on my analysis
that it's wrong to use Adblock software doesn't mean that I believe people who
use Adblock software should be fined or put in jail, etc. just that they are
making a decision that is unethical. Laws deal with the practicalities of
society and what has to be done to keep order, it should not be used as a tool
for prescribing a 0-leeway master code of ethics upon each person.

------
seiji
_Before the web, people changed channels or got up during TV commercials,_

Many people still don't realize it's _trivial_ to have a DVR automatically
skip commercials, but advertising companies and TV networks sued TiVo to make
sure they will never implement it.

 _Modern web ads and trackers are far over the line for many people today,_

Not just "over the line," but for over 5 years now, advertising networks have
allowed _exploits_ to be delivered over their advertising networks. There's
nothing like browsing a website then having a drive-by crypto locker installed
on your machine.

As of 2015, blocking advertising isn't a moral question, it's a question of do
you value your own security.

 _But publishers, advertisers, and browser vendors are all partly responsible
for the situation we’re all in._

People say "trust the wisdom of the free market," but they forget the
important part: free markets _always_ become corrupt and _always_ accumulate
power towards the top. A market without government oversight and intervention
is just a way to exploit and abuse people for profit with no repercussions.

 _It has never been easier to collect small direct payments online,_

That's more tricky, isn't it? We've all viewed some article at a tiny city's
online newspaper then been hit with a "SUBSCRIBE TO PODUNK DAILY ONLINE TO
KEEP READING, ONLY $24.99/month." It's not sustainable for _every_ small thing
to receive direct payments and we don't have a clean disaggregation of a
common "subscribe to internet publicans" pool (like iTunes Match, but for
writing? Still useless if you get 0.00002 cents per page view—but, that's
basically online advertising again).

~~~
k8tte
flattr.com

~~~
anc84
Is a centralised service. I want to pay "cash", I want my privacy. It is no
one's business which things I give money to.

~~~
CodeCube
bitcoin! :)

~~~
anc84
Hahaha, and let everyone in the big wide world see all my transactions? Good
joke!

------
k__
We went from the "static" newspaper/TV ads, that didn't know about what you
did with them, to "dynamic" web/mobile apps, that know exactly if you watched
them, clicked on them AND eventually bought something coming from that ad.
Also, which ad from the same ad-network you watched before, what apps/websites
you used before etc.

Advertisement got much more power on the Internet and got much more
predictable for advertisers.

But we also switched from turning pages or switching channels, if we don't
like the ads, to blocking whole advertising companies with the help of
software. We can now even prevent the ad from being "overseen" at all, because
it doesn't even get shown to us in the first place. newspaper adds always hit
your subconsciousness.

Both sides stepped up their game. Don't see any problem with this.

------
Vintila
Tangentially related but: I think the ethical way forward for ad-blocking
extentions/software would be for it to self-identify [1]. That way if a
website owner wants to block you or be more upfront about asking for
donations, they don't have to resort to JS hacks to determine if you are using
an adblocker. If they don't want me to see their site ad-free [2] I can either
move on or decide that the content is worth a few ads.

[1] I only know the basics about the http protocol but I'm guessing something
in the header could be added. [2] Which is completely within their rights as
virtual "land owners".

------
btbuildem
Not sure how ethics play into this. If your service is of such low quality
that nobody is willing to pay for it, and you resort to ads to support your
business.. well, tough. Make something that sells, or try a different way of
making a living.

People are blocking ads because nobody likes a firehose of garbage pointed
right at their face.

To crank that tired old record, "this sector is ripe for disruption" aka
somebody go already make an ad network stand-in where the user can pay the
equivalent of per-impression cost and visit any participating site ad-free.

------
logfromblammo
I see ad revenue as someone who has an audience opening up access to that
audience for a third party in exchange for a fee. It is entirely up to the
third party to figure out how to get a return on that investment.

Neither the content creator nor the audience bears any responsibility to the
third party to ensure that the opened channel is used effectively.

If shit comes through the channel, I'm going to route it right into the sewer.
If gold comes through, I'll route it into my pocket. Either way, I still care
more about my relationship with the content creators than about their
sponsored side-channels.

The ads do not pay for the content. The content creators pay for their own
content. Then they hold their nose and make a deal with shady web-advertisers
to capitalize a bit more on what they have already done. Those advertisers
aren't buying content. They are buying access to the audience.

------
petercooper
The bigger issue, IMHO, is quality of advertising rather than its presence.
People pay $15 for a theater ticket and sit through 10 _minutes_ of ads, buy
Vogue magazine and have 30%+ of pages be ads, buy The New York Times and be
hit with ads all over the place, watch the Superbowl specifically to see the
ads, and more. What people seem to really want are better ads or even ads that
are entertainment or content in their own right (which is why native
advertising has taken off).

~~~
touristtam
Or a revamped pricing scheme for the website they might favor for their
content. Seeing how the internet and computers allows for many more content to
be published at a fraction of the cost of yesterday's system, there is a gap
to be filled between the old pricing scheme of hard copies newspaper and all
"free" content of the web.

$15 per month per website (like the NYT) seems a bit excessive when 10 or 20
other websites might offer the same news and at least a dozen direct
competitors have similar offers. My father and his father might have had a
subscription to a couple of newspaper/magazine, but I have the news at my
finger tips.

------
brillenfux
Maybe if ads weren't such a malware cesspool people would have less reason to
block them.

The people providing ads do a dirt-poor job curating them, so blocking ads
isn't about convenience but about security.

------
arenaninja
I whitelist ads on websites now, and I wish I could do the same on my phone. I
think someone here or on reddit mentioned, and I had the same experience,
trying out IE Edge and it being a decent browser, but as soon as the
autoplaying video ads start, I downloaded FF, added uBlock and didn't look
back. I use the same browser setup on my phone, and now and then I use some
apps that emulate a browser (like Reddit is Fun or HN app), and the experience
is wholly broken. I was reading an article and it was miserable - the fixed
header for the site plus fixed footer for the ads took up about 1/3rd of the
real estate, not to mention they were jittery and I couldn't focus because I'd
scroll too far, then the ads would load where I was reading.

There's no ethics involved with me. Poor experience? Get blocked. Decent
experience? Welcome to the whitelist

~~~
otis_inf
Why whitelist ads at all? Ads are evil, the ad agencies track you, you run the
risk of viruses / malware (like the recent 0-day exploit on a russian news
site through ads), and there's zero gain for the person visiting the site.

~~~
joosters
I understand the idea of whitelisting sites that you want to support, but even
that is tricky when their ads are provided by a myriad of ad companies,
clearinghouses and ad auction sites. So even if the original website is good
and trustworthy, the ad networks that you let through could still ruin you.

~~~
stevesearer
whitelist officesnapshots.com because we self-host and sell our own ads
circumventing ad networks :)

------
edent
Why is this becoming an issue now? I've been blocking adverts on-and-off for
10 years or so. Back then it was manually editing a HOSTS file - is it just in
the news now because it's becoming slightly easier on iPhone?

~~~
netrus
It becomes mainstream. We are at a point where we get less content, because
revenue for content-creators is impacted by blocking.

------
splat
I used to use ad-block and later disabled it to support websites that generate
good content, but now I'm going back. What's driven me back to ad-blocking
software is that ad tracking makes it nearly impossible to buy gifts for a
spouse. If I want to buy my wife a pair of sunglasses and google "Ray Ban
sunglasses", guess what she starts seeing ads for all over the web. We noticed
this a while back and would do gift shopping in incognito mode, but I've
gotten fed up enough with it that I'm just going to start blocking everything
again.

~~~
vsync
Do you have separate (client- and server-side) user accounts or browser
profiles?

~~~
splat
We use completely different accounts on completely different computers.

------
anc84
How come everyone is using the closed-source, ad-network friendly Ghostery
instead of the open-source [https://disconnect.me/](https://disconnect.me/) ?

~~~
vetinari
Because actually stopping tracking requires premium (paid) version? Or because
mobile version is not a browser plugin, but virtual vpn, so it doesn't work
with your real vpn?

~~~
insertnickname
The Disconnect website says that the free version "[blocks] malware & tracking
(Desktop only)".

~~~
vetinari
Yes, and also says: Upgrade to premium protection - Block malware & tracking
(Desktop and mobile).

Ghostery works fine on both, desktop and mobile. It even syncs as an addon
across both instances.

------
bachmeier
The current model can't work. The internet is becoming unusable due to ads. I
am not sure how it will evolve, in terms of paying for content, but this is
surely not the answer. I expect that we will be paying for content in some
form. Perhaps a Spotify-type model where you pay a monthly fee and the fee is
distributed to content providers.

On the issue of ethics, I'd say it's not ethical to spread out a small amount
of content across six pages just to get more page views. It's bad for
advertisers and for consumers.

------
abustamam
I think one of the big problems is that most end-users don't know everything
that goes into displaying an ad (myself included).

Yes, we can say, "I consent to viewing an ad in order to receive X free
service" in the same way that we consent to viewing a commercial when we watch
TV or listening to an ad on the radio.

However, in those latter two examples, the information is one-way. Those
advertisers don't collect any personal information (outside of perhaps our
viewing/listening location).

When it comes to website ads, most consumers do not know/realize that a) the
advertisers are collecting a WEALTH of your personal information and b) that
information comes at a cost of your bandwidth (which, for many mobile users,
is limited). There are probably many other things that happen between the end-
user and the third-party that I am not aware of.

Sure, they may consent to viewing a free ad, but most of them do NOT consent
to collection of information nor increased usage of bandwidth.

I am happy that many websites are now (at least trying to) put a visible
cookie privacy policy, but I think even those little policies are getting
banner blindness.

------
frou_dh
The formal name for the browser is "User Agent".

Your agent should act in you, the user's, interest. Decidedly partisan and so
what? You shouldn't have to explicitly instruct it to defend you from
surveillance and pollution - it should do that of its own accord from day
zero.

Or is your browser a double-agent?

~~~
jfb
Think about who makes the browser, and what their interests are. Mozilla and
Google both are 100% creatures of the advertising world (in the former case,
indirectly through their search box deals) and have a vested interest in
selling you on.

I'm not saying switch to Safari or Edge, but it's important to remember the
incentives that the browser vendors respond to.

------
hkon
Nowdays content is there for the sake of the ad. Nowdays the content in many
cases is an ad. Block that...

------
gambiter
I really truly don't understand why people this this is an ethical issue at
all.

I personally own 12 personal domains, all for various content that I
personally put up. Some blogs, some game servers, etc, etc. I don't charge for
my content, and I don't advertise. I'm not in it to make money, I'm in it to
share things with people, and I do it all out of my own wallet.

Why is there this assumption that all content needs to be subsidized by the
readers? I mean, I get it... there's certainly value in compensating content
producers for their time, and even allowing them to do it full time... but
there is SO much content out there that is basically put up out of the
goodness of the creators' hearts. Why can't we keep it that way?

------
minimuffins
"Ads help us to be more informed about what products are available to us"
(paraphrasing)

A kind public service! We should really be paying them, but the advertisers
inform us for free!

Asking about the ethics of hiding ads seems a little like asking about the
ethics of taking shelter during a carpet bombing attack.

I wish we would steer these discussions away from economics (Do the ads work?
Are there better ways to monetize, do they stabilize or destabilize markets,
etc) and toward culture. What is the cultural effect of saturating the
internet (and the rest of the world for that matter) with ads? I am not the
first person to ask...

------
seanconaty
I'm glad someone wrote this article. I used to work at an ad network and for
that reason, I've ethically chosen not to use an ad blocker. But I do agree
that consolidation of tracking, over-abundance of ad spots and nasty
performance have reached new lows that I've considered using one.

I think it would be nice if publishers just went back to <img> tags. Script
tags and iframes and flash give to much power and result in lots of
performance issues.

You can still track and consolidate with an img tag but the tracking is
limited to what's in the http headers.

------
LukeB_UK
I have a question for everyone advocating the use of ad blockers: Do you just
do a blanket block for all ads, ban the big networks with the trackers along
with the malware serving ones or something else?

I understand wanting to block the ones with the trackers for privacy reasons
and the malware ones because nobody wants malware, but blanket blocking all
ads tars everyone with the same brush.

Edit: Personally, I used to just blanket ban but I've recently moved towards
having uBlock only block the malware ones and will manually block any spammy
sites.

~~~
mikestew
> Do you just do a blanket block for all ads, ban the big networks with the
> trackers along with the malware serving ones or something else?

Just because there might be a little fresh water in the cesspool doesn't mean
I'm drinking from that tap. I block all of them. I'm not the one that pooped
in the drinking water, so I'm not going to spend time sorting out the good
from the bad.

------
serve_yay
A good writeup, though I don't agree with the statement about web devs and
browser makers -- we read the web too, perhaps more than anyone! :)

It's possible to want to make the platform more powerful _and_ not like some
of the ways the power is being used.

------
Animats
The article is a promotion for the author's ad service: _" For publishers who
want to remain ad-supported, ethically and tastefully presented native
advertising, such as sponsored posts in feeds and our community’s podcast ads,
has proven to be more effective, more profitable, and less user-hostile by far
compared to awful network <script> embeds."_

"Sponsored posts" are in some ways worse than pop-ups. We can block pop-ups.
Also note that "sponsored posts" that look like regular posts violate the
FTC's rule that ads must be distinguished from non-ad content. [1]

[1] [https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-
re...](https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-releases/ftc-
staff-revises-online-advertising-disclosure-
guidelines/130312dotcomdisclosures.pdf)

~~~
MBCook
To my knowledge Marco doesn't _run_ an ad service.

> Also note that "sponsored posts" that look like regular posts violate the
> FTC's rule that ads must be distinguished from non-ad content.

I assume that's why he wrote "ethically and tastefully presented native
advertising".

------
drdaeman
I wonder, what opponents of ad-blocking think about email spam? Is it
different if spam ads are injected by email client? (some email and even
messaging apps do this -- not to the actual mailbox, of course, but to the
displayed inbox contents)

------
romaniv
Why do ads need to track you anyway? Doesn't it make more sense to customize
ads based on the specific page you're looking at? It seems like this is rarely
done. At least it doesn't seem that way most of the time.

------
guelo
It would be great if the ad business model on the web died. Hopefully the new
business models that would popup would be more upfront. People used to pay 25
cents to read a newspaper or a few bucks for a magazine.

~~~
VLM
>People used to pay 25 cents to read a newspaper

When you didn't have a world wide internet there was a lot of friction meaning
you end up with 5000 newspapers all publishing the same junk for 25 cents
because on average any community only had 1 or 2 choices at most and the local
oligopoly, not wanting to go out of business, agreed to charge 25 cents.

You put all 5000 on the internet, you really need 4998 of them to go out of
business before you can think of going oligopoly and raising prices to 25
cents again. That has to happen first. Most of the competition has to die off
before prices can rise again.

In the paper newspaper days, culture supported about as many journalists as
police detectives, roughly, which is a lot. In the internet era you need about
as many journalists as there are pro football players, roughly. A lot of
journalism schools need to close, lots of people need new jobs, its not merely
closing out legacy newspaper corporations. Until the "supply" of journalist
humans drops by a factor of 100 to 1000, there isn't going to be much money to
be made in that field.

It is like being in the horse buggy business around a century ago. Another
interesting analogy might be village blacksmith vs the industrial nationwide
factory. When one guy at one machine can manufacture an entire nations
widgets, there isn't any requirement anymore for every village blacksmith to
hand make widgets.

~~~
guelo
I don't buy it because people are more addicted to content than ever. There is
a huge demand for high quality content it's just a matter of figuring the
business model to meet that demand. But once it's figured out there will be
more journalists than ever. I can't imagine an info-starved internet future.

------
faragon
In my opinion, DRM will "fix" that in the future: browser plugins could not be
able to identify those ads. So we could reach "Black Mirror"-like ads sooner o
later. Brave new world...

------
VLM
The sale of eight-track players for cars is a violation of my government given
right to an eternal revenue stream as an owner of a radio station and I demand
"someone" do something about those evil (evil because they cut into my
constitutionally protected right to profit) evil eight-track players cutting
into my ad revenue. Won't someone Please think of the children, and the top 40
music boy bands, oh and most importantly my profits? I don't care if
technology has passed me by, I have a good given right to profit as my
manifest destiny and I demand those meddling kids stop interfering with it. Or
else I'll... well, or else, yeah that's it.

------
TheCoelacanth
Any ethical framework in which it is unethical to take minimal steps to
protect myself from psychological manipulation is an ethical framework that I
have no interest in adhering to.

------
PopeOfNope
Forget about advertisers and site runners and economics and the rest of it. I
run ad blocking software because ads are too good a delivery mechanism for
malware.

------
eddd
The average cost for displaying and ad is 0.005$. I am assuming that 30% of
that goes to publisher. Would you pay 0.005*0.3 = 0.0015$ per page view? I
would.

~~~
tremon
Not without a restitution possibility. I will not pay anything for domain
parking or site rehashing (sedo, quorra, expertsexchange), but I would pay for
e.g. stackexchange or eurekalert.

~~~
eddd
But still, concept of paying the same (or even higher) rate for page view is
not that crazy.

------
Paul_S
Ethics? You mean business. There is no ethical dilemma here, just a business
model that might be not working as well as you'd like.

------
Joeboy
Aren't we just going to start making websites that don't serve the content
until they've served the ads?

~~~
adrusi
Well no, because then the page would load way too slowly and users would click
away and avoid the site in the future.

But suppose publishers did go this route. Adblocking software would just
evolve to match it. They would fetch the ads from the server, possibly via a
proxy, run their scripts, feeding bogus statistics to the trackers, and then
not display the ads.

Users have the right to control their computers however they want. Trying to
limit how the user can use their computer to have better control over your
content is DRM. And, in fact, the only effective way of preventing adblockers
would be to use traditional DRM software, since we have laws saying that users
can't circumvent them.

~~~
Joeboy
> Well no, because then the page would load way too slowly and users would
> click away and avoid the site in the future.

People (fairly) happily sit through 15 minutes of advertising an hour, if
that's the only way to get the content they want.

Maybe adblocking software will keep up. It lags behind at the moment, so I'm a
bit doubtful it will keep up in a future of increasingly sneaky ad delivery.

------
harryovers
People who support ad-blockers and support net neutrality don't seem to see
the hypocrisy in their stance. If all net traffic should be treated equal then
shouldn't advertising net traffic be treated with the same equality as content
net traffic and not blocked by some software running somewhere on that network
(even if it is running at your end of the network).

~~~
npkarnik
I don't buy the hypocrisy. Net neutrality requires ISP infrastructure
companies to not artificially restrict end-users choice for legal content.
Especially as ISP companies become coupled with content companies (Comcast/NBC
Universal) and generate anti-trust concerns regarding throttling their
competitors in the content vertical.

An end-user running an ad-blocker has literally nothing to do with the
appropriate role of the infrastructure provider (which many argue should be an
unbiased plumbing system).

I do think there are some ethical concerns for running an ad-blocker, but I
don't think this is one of them.

~~~
harryovers
Net neutrality is about all net traffic being treated equally. It is not just
about the ISPs throttling what they want. Ad blockers do not treat all network
traffic equally, they will block it if they think it is anything to do with an
advertising company.

~~~
PeterisP
Net neutrality is about third parties treating all net traffic equally.

 _I_ am not treating all net traffic equally, I'm not visiting at least 99.99%
of global websites - and that is perfectly consistent with net neutrality.

In that sense, an ad blocking or extra-ad-adding service that is implemented
against my wishes by any third party (no matter if it's ISP, software vendor
or someone who hacked my computer) violates that neutrality, but the exact
same ad blocking or ad adding done by me or the content provider is
acceptable.

------
Kenji
Is it ethical to block articles about ethics of ad-blocking?

------
charles2013
like OP, online ads (partially) put food on my table. but that's where the
similarities stop: whereas OP mentions he's "never been tempted to run ad-
blocking software before," i've blocked ads for years. and i don't just block
ads myself, i advise my friends and family to block them, too.

what most of my friends and family don't know is web ads represent, arguably,
one of the most dangerous aspects of modern web UX. ad servers exploited with
0-day vulns are one thing, but what worry me (and what i despise) most are
dodgy ads that try to mimic/replicate some aspect of the publisher's web UI,
and ads that fraudulently misrepresent other websites (e.g. fake facebook
notification ads). many of these ads run on the biggest networks.

so instead of repeatedly telling my grandma that the buttons on certain sites
aren't actually buttons for those sites, or that the banner with the facebook
friend request isn't actually from facebook, i just install adblock on her
browser.

i'm well aware of the irony and the double-standard. but safety first, right?

~~~
charles2013
if i've written something that's factually wrong or misleading, offensive, or
otherwise violates the comment guidelines, i would appreciate the opportunity
to update my comment or delete it. and for that to happen i would need some
feedback.

