Slashdot Mirror
Does Adblock Violate A Social Contract?
almondjoy writes "Newsforge is currently running a story on Firefox extensions where the author states the following regarding use of the AdBlock extension: 'If you use this tool ... there are those who would assert you are not holding up your end of a 'social contract' between yourself and the Web site that you are browsing' Would you be volating a social contract hitting the 30sec skip button on Tivo? Or putting a strip of paper across the bottom of our TV screen to block out those super annoying scrolling banners? I have found that using the combination of AdBlock and FlashBlock extensions in Firefox has greatly enhanced my browsing experience. Has acceptance of web sites crammed with advertising content become part of my social contract with society?"
Doesn't SPAM violate the same contract.
The thing advertisers don't seem to get is that you don't sell products by annoying the hell out of people. Pop-ups, pop-unders, floating ads, the all singing all dancing flash ads, anything that blinks or wants you to answer a trivia question, ad infested web pages that have half a page of text and require you to hit the next button to continue to the next page. These are all ANNOYING, that is why people are blocking or otherwise avoiding them.
You don't see people going to extreme lengths to block Google text ads. Why? Because they are fairly unobtrusive, yet still visible enough for people to see them.
If advertisers don't want me using Adblock they should use small, unobtrusive, static images and I will happily turn it off. But until then, they can whine and complain all they want. Just my two cents...
What gets me is that arguably, social cotract was first violated by offending websites and ad-server ppl in general, with things like popups, glaringly bad animation (ie, flashing colors, etc). Not to mention the EVIL doubleclick and their "we will track your ass... try and avoid us, punk" attitude. Which is what I believe the adblock authors were trying to control/avoid/defeat.
I won't adblock a server/ad that's generally nice or doesn't get in the way of my browsing... think google or other text-based adverts, or even non-animated, "non-epilepsy inducing" image ads. THATs a real social contract... because google/etc know that their revenue relies on their good behavior. I respect that.
Finally, on a dialup (like at my parents place), adblock SIGNIFICANTLY improves performance. I think removal of bloat is impressively important for non-broadband folks, and that's another case of advertisers "messing with social contract". I especially hated it when the page would load fast, but the ad at the top woudl sit there and hold up the entire page from rendering. WTF.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I also don't feel bad about not watching most commercials on TV or ripping the DVD's I buy and removing al the crap from them. I paid for the product, I don't want to see more ads. I pay about $140 a month to my cable company for Digital cable, Digital Broadband and a Digital phone. The least the cable company can do is get rid of ads for me, though I know that day will never come.
The only ad content I don't make an effort to block are text based ads like Google uses. I have no problem with those types of ads since they do not distract me. The day most/all web ads are text based and don't flash to "get your attention" is the day that I will stop using adblock and flashblock to block web ads. Oh, and adblock has two modes: "remove images" and "hide images". The "remove images" option doesn't download the images and the "hide images" option downloads but doesn't display them. So if you want to surf a site and still help out the web advertiser, just use "hide images", though I use "remove images" so I can get faster page load times.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
If a commercial website can't support itself via its audience, that website should die. If the users of the website are sufficiently motivated to pay for content, they will, and it will survive. Here's a hint: if you need to be paid, then be up-front and honest about it (eg: LWN). If your worth preserving, you'll be fine.
There is no such thing as an implied or "social" contract - by their very nature, contracts are not implications! The whole terminology is a marketing exercise designed to appeal to the "guilt" that just because someone is giving you something, you ought to pay for it.
Sheesh! Social contracts! What next ? Breathing contracts ?
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
could get you sued, then. I guess.
And what about a simple pop-up blocker, especially now that Microsoft includes one with IE? Does this violate a "social contract?" How is blocking any other type of ads different than blocking pop-up ads?
It's no more a violation of a social contract than having a popup blocker built into the browser...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Stated that websites weren't allowed to pop-up advertisements. When they started to do so, a renegotiation of the contract became necessary, and the new contract states that while web sites may attempt to pop up windows, I am free to disallow that on my system.
If web sites have a problem with this, they need to learn to read the fine print before they sign.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
It doesn't matter.
Until websites trying to enforce ad-views, it won't matter.
Any website who tries to aggressively force ad-views will be left alone in the dust, so I don't think it's much of a problem
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
If I could violate the social contracts of every advertiser out there, I would be a happy man. I just hope that someone somewhere is angry that I've blocked their crappy flash/gif advertisement.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Social contract or not it is really my choice whether or not I want something displayed on my screen. If the revenue generated from ads on a particular website is suffering to the point of not being profitable then perhaps it is time to look at new ways of making money. You can't try to enforce some form of draconian control over everyone's computers. This is my machine and I will decide what is downloaded, displayed, and run on it.
I would have to say that the social contract that's being broken are by the people advertising. I've been browsing the web since it's inception with HTML and the like. The things that's been invaded is my space, not the other way around with me blocking it.
Adblock, flash block, block images from this server will always win out with me.
There's an old saying that seems appropriate here:
Free speech is the right to say whatever you want; it's not the right to make people listen.
Why should this be different on the internet?
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
This "social contract" BS is something marketers dreamed up to make it "bad" to block their ads. The TV people say the same thing about how you're "breaking contract" by muting commercials, getting up off your duff for a drink, or skipping past them on a recording you made.
I didn't sign any contract. I didn't agree to any ToS. I don't want to see your commercials, so poo on you.
The idea of a "social contract" is just a scam some people use to con other people into thinking they have obligations that they never actually agreed to. Any real contract is written down and signed by the parties agreeing to it.
And conversely, should we implictly pay for the bandwidth to receive content we neither requested nor wanted? I think not.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Advertising exploits a coincidence. It is not an obligation on the viewer. I don't enter into any agreement, implied or otherwise, with /. when I come here looking for content. That I happen to look at the ad on the top of the page as a consequence is a side effect that slashdot and other web sites choose to capitalize on them. Good for them. If and when most or all users start blocking ads, they'll have to find another means to survive, or just close up shop.
It isn't your customers obligation to fund your business. It's your obligation to satisfy your customers sufficiently well that they fund your business. Not many companies seem to remember that.
Adverisers took the social contract, ripped it into fifty billion pieces, then get upset when we don't abide by our side of the contract?
Look, I am perfectly willing to see reasonable, well placed ads. I am seeing a Vonage banner ad above Slashdot write now. I am NOT forced to see intrusive, obnoxious crap that intereferes with the reason why I use the service. Anything that requires me to "click" on it to send it away qualifies as abusive intereference, and should be outlawed.
Morons think "If I can get them involved, they will pay more attention to my ad" Instead most consumers get ANGRY at both the site that is abusing them and the moron company that thinks "bad pr is better than no pr".
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"Yes, your honor, I was honoring my social contract by carefully reading all the roadside billboards and advertising when I accidentally drove my car into that Denny's."
The Social Contract cuts both ways, and I don't see advertisers holding up their end of the bargain with truthful ads. Are the boobs in True's advertising blitz actually using the service? Methinks not. Does clicking here actually get a free iPod? Methinks not. Does whatever those damn strobing ads ... nevermind, no.
When media sites start carrying advertising that's not disrespectful of their audience's intelligence, then I'll worry about bypassing it disturbing a social contract, but while its not adhering to the social contract itself then they can bite my shiney metal ass.
Indeed, ignoring the gratuitous reference to a "social contract": put simply, AdBlock is not in any way "unethical" because advertisers pay on the assumption that they'll make money. If they don't think a certain type of advertising will generate revenue, they won't use it. Why won't advertisers mount megaphones on the top of cars screeching "NIVEA HAND CREAM!" in residential areas? Because it would piss people off, make them less likely to buy Nivea hand cream; or, more importantly, just be ignored. I use AdBlock not primarily because I don't like having to see advertising per se, but (A) because busy, moving, flashing ads interrupt my browsing experience and (B) because I have never clicked on an ad in my decade-plus internet experience. Most advertisers pay on clickthrus, and I bet that most AdBlock users, like me, would never clickthru anyway. Indeed, if I didn't use AdBlock I'd end up making more corporate enemies than I do by using it--"Eugh! That Pepsi Flash ad is horrendous! I'm never buying Pepsi again!" If AdBlock use affects advertising revenues, then advertisers will come up with a better way to sell their product. If it doesn't, they won't. Somewhere in the middle, they'll make advertising even more pernicious; but Mozilla's development platform means they'll always be someone around to program a way to get around their get around. Isn't OSS great?
Yeah, but those of us who are competent enough to block the annoying ads are also probably intelligent enough not to buy anything from the advertisers even if we were forced to view the ads. So I don't think they're losing any sales. Though they probably are losing money, paying for our pageviews without us actually seeing the ad.
I don't think it's about a social contract, what it comes down to is that I will NEVER buy something simply because I saw it in an ad. I don't buy things based on ads, I buy things when someone cool says it's cool (Penny Arcade is a good example.) I can't remember ever buying something because of an advertisment. Even a TV commercial. (The exception, I think, is the Saturday/Sunday newspaper ads from CompUSA and Best Buy and Circuit City, but that's only because I'm already looking for something and they just happen to have it on sale) Since I'm NEVER going to buy something based on an online advertisment... aren't I saving the advertisers bandwidth from not downloading their ad? More to the point, aren't Adblock users as a whole saving advertisers a quantifiable amount of bandwidth (money) by not downloading ads for things they aren't going to buy?
Finally, on a dialup (like at my parents place), adblock SIGNIFICANTLY improves performance.
Thank you!
I'm still on dial-up (free from university), and I often use Adblock in this way. Many pages I frequent have some images that simply waste bandwidth. For instance, I have blocked a lot of the images on my on-line banking website so that the response time is better. Getting rid of those images cuts down how long I'm dialed in.
Social or not, a contract represents an *agreement* among people or groups. To have a valid contract, first there must be a common agreement that the terms of that contract are actually valid. Our at-large social contract works because, on the whole, people agree that there are certain rules we must live by in order for society to work.
However, there has NEVER, implicitly or otherwise, been any sort of common agreement that society *must* endure advertising, regardless of degree of intrusion or method of delivery. When TV and radio were first brought on the air, the idea that commercial advertising would allow them to survive was not a given. The fact that it *did* allow them to survive happened to come to pass, but then again, there were no technological means for the public to manipulate the medium for their own benefit - for a while. However, there was no obligation for society to absorb content broadcast to them, and indeed when options became available, they were used.
When the first tape players became available, there *were* arguments and court cases regarding recording off the air, whether it was "legal" to listen while skipping recordings, etc. These arguments have all been had before. And consistently, it has been recognized that people hvae no inherent "obligation" to absorb content in any way other than however they see fit.
I have no obligation to read the ads in a magazine. I have no obligation not to turn down the dial on the radio when commercials come on. I have no obligation to sit by idly while pop-up windows dance across my desktop. THERE IS NO SUCH CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT, social or otherwise. If my actions, and the actions of millions of others, somehow cause those broadcasting content discomfort or loss, that's their problem, not mine.
I have no obligation to support *any* business model for anyone else. Indeed, if there were such an obligation, then society could never evolve or adapt to change, could it?
In short - that's just plain old horse manure.
What is wrong with the adblock home page? It gets the job done. Also, what would be the rush on adblock 0.6? Adblock 0.5.x works great and I have not had one problem with it. As for Filterset.G, what problems do you have with the filters or the person who makes them? I just started using Filterset.G and it blocks a boat load of crap in a small filter set.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
A point that is missed by lots of people, and even myself when I don't actively think about it, is that since we're using web browsers that aren't subject to hijacking or spyware, we don't see the other reason to get mad at web site owners and advertisers.
As far as I'm concerned, they've violated any form of 'social contract' en masse by hijacking peoples' PCs for new ways of delivering ads. I believe that installing software through bugs in the web browser is tantamount to breaking into someones' computer. Companies that design and implement such software, and other companies that contract for their ads to be delivered should be prosecuted and their owners/directors jailed for their abuses.
I also have an opinion about software companies leaving their products vulnerable for years like this, but that's for another debate.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Reading the content of a web page may not be a right, but they do NOT have the right to use up my bandwidth (and if I view over my cell phone, they are CHARGING me to do it).
Look, what they are doing is far worse than what we are doing. Why?because I did not sign anything/click on anything that said I agree to see their ads. Neither did any governemnt agency say, hey that's OK. They did NOT even warn me before making money off of my time that they were going to force me to see the ad.
Contracts are things BOTH people agree to. There is no "implicit contract" unless both sides are acting reasonable, and the advertisers ceased to act reasonable a LONG time ago.
By showing their web site to people WITHOUT getting agreement before hand to show me the ad, they accept the fact that I am under no legal, moral, or ethical obligation to see the ad. Instead the ad is treated just like any other content - it is something they are offering but NOT requireing me to see. I am perfectly within my rights to see some of the content on their pages but not all, and perfectly within my rights to see only the non-ad content.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Some advertisers think that the only way to sell to people is to get in their face, and demand their attention like a screaming child. Hence, you get crappy ad formats like Eyeblaster and Pointroll. This is a way to piss people off, more than a way to induce them to buy your product, and I think their high click rates are only due to people trying to find the "Close" button to make the ad go away. Fortunately, not all advertisers are like this. Many are starting to recognize that something big and flashy is only "cool" once and otherwise subtle and contextual is really the only way to endear you to your customers online.
Meanwhile, some users think that there should be NO ads on the internet. They think that it's their right to access their favorite sites for free and they shouldn't be bothered with the ads that actually pay for the site to exist. Many content publishers work hard to make sure their ads aren't obtrusive, fit well within their site and they fight back against the Bad Advertisers (see above) by refusing their business -- but that doesn't matter to these users. They demand free stuff!
Fortunately users and advertisers recognize there is a middle ground, and so there's still a lot of harmony in the advertising-supported-website / good-user-experience world.
But the lunatics on both sides are forcing the issue to a head. They're starting an arms race, between the AdBlock/FlashBlock software, and designing a site around advertising (instead of vice-versa). If these people keep pushing it, soon lots more free sites will be entirely done in flash (or some other proprietary format) where you can't disable the ads; and the ads will become the content itself. Increasing product placements on tv shows are just a natural evolution of advertising supported broadcasters losing money from increasing use of commercial skipping systems. Pay-tv like HBO is one answer but not the answer to everything. There can be a middle ground, but both sides have to work for it.
Source, please.
<p>Research is pretty clear that text based ads have a much higher rate of success than any other form of internet ad.</p>
Sorry, but I signed no "social contract". I am not obligated to look any ads.
I hate this mentality that companies have in that "consumers" are expected to devote their lives to VIEWING ADS. Companies are just pissed that they can no longer make sheep out of those who acknowledge the problem and use wonderful tools like AdBlock.
Besides, if someone uses AdBlock, it means they don't WANT to view your ads, and if someone doesn't want to view your ads, guess what the chances are of them buying something from it? Oh, pretty slim to NONE.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
If you refuse to see the ads, you should find your content on another website.
I take it, then, that you will never:
I mean, you wouldn't want to be exploiting those providers by not viewing their advertisements, would you? Somehow, you're asserting that advertisers/providers have a right to force you to look at them.
Just like downloading music on a p2p system is a violation of copyright law.
What a broad generalization. Ever tried getting some legal tunes from indie artists? Or being in a country that allows downloading music?
You have no social right to listen to that music.
Yes, but your analogy is nothing close to that. A more appropriate analogy would be purchasing an album by $BAND and being forced to listen to $TRACK1_ADVERTISING_SPIEL_FOR_3:00 each time you attempted to play the disc.
I call it the sucker tax. The world needs suckers so that the rest of us can get breaks. Rebates are an excellent example. The suckers buy the product and don't mail in the rebate, we mail in the rebate and save money. We were able to save that money because the suckers subsidised us by paying more.
Same with ALL advertising. You get to watch TV because the suckers are buying everything Britney SPears puts out.
evil is as evil does
No signature, no verbal promise, no handshake, no nothing.
Frankly, I hate the idea of "free" websites with ads. You want to espouse your views? Pay to do so. You can share a server with a bunch of folks for a pittance a month. Blogging can be had ad-free cheaply.
I wanted more than that, and I know what I'm doing, so I bought a used server and pay for rack space, and so far there are no ads. There probably will be at some point, but they'll be low key, and they won't pop up, pop under, grab, track, or anything else. They'll just sit there (like google ads do). That'll be to help cover costs on the public service site. Or I may just do a PayPal donation thing like some sites do; I have had folks send me money and gear in appreciation.
But my personal stuff? I pay for that. Why should someone else have to pay for my "right" to express myself? That's INSANE.
I pay for my internet connection. I pay for my server. I have *zero* obligation to allow myself to be annoyed by anyone else's choices.
Advertising is the only thing keeping [...] (most) internet free.
It is? Oh shit! I'd better throw some up on my page!
It's been a long time.
There are always bozos who actually buy things they get spammed about, which is why spammers continue doing what they do.
I propose the following method to get rid of spam:
1) Spam a lot of people.
2) When people respond to the spam wanting to buy things, get their address, go to their houses and kill them. I think we can all agree that this isn't murder so much as a mercy killing.
3) ???
4) Profit!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
$30 rebate at Fry's for a really cool computer tower box. 5 minutes, enbelope and stamp. Two weeks later a check for 30 buck-o-roonies. You must really make a lot of money per hour to top $30/5 minutes! In that case I wish I had your pay scale! You must be a lawyer or something. ;-)
Amen. Does it mean that I am violating a social contract if I run a website and don't put advertising on it?
Advertisers made their own bed. I remember a few years ago, there was a website up that hosted clips of funny TV commercials. They had a rating system in place, and it was really cool. Then they were shut down, for rights infringement of some kind.
So let me get this straight - advertisers create commercials for their products, and they do so in such a way to get people to watch them. But then they shut down a website that was giving them FREE advertising of their products. It makes absolutely no sense to me, and speaks to the general lunacy of advertising in general.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Targeted doesn't always equal intrusive. Targeting can simply mean ads appropriate for their placement. An ad for feminine products wouldn't make as much sense in Playboy as it would on the Oxygen Channel, for instance.
I'd say that reading a book review from a trusted source while having an ad linking to the book on Amazon (via Google Ads or whatever) would be well targeted, unintrusive, and perhaps even helpful to most reasonable people. This is why Google's advertising model works so well as compared to companies that just annoy the heck out of people to catch their eyes or trick them into following a link.
My computer is MY computer. I assert the right to retain control over it. Your server is YOUR server, you have the right to assert control over it. The problem is, there is no way for me to know ahead of time, often times, if a website will have annoying popups or popunders. Or flash adds that do annoying things and can't be 'paused' in their animation, or easily muted without muting my whole computer.
This is where Adblock type technologies fulfill the other end of the "Social Contract" - letting me control my computer. If you don't want me viewing your content unless I view the ad also, fine, then give me a way to decline both. Come up with a way to deny the content if I don't view the advert, and instead just return a generic page stating, "This site uses {insert ad-type here}. In order to view the content, you must allow this type of advertising."
Then I can choose whether to accept the popup, or browse on to someone else.
The problem with this "social contract" theory is, I never *agreed* to this social contract. One can argue that by viewing the content, I am implicitly agreeing to it. But the problem is, until I actually go to a site, and either get a popup, or block it, I don't know what the 'terms' of this social contract are.
It's like saying you have to accept the terms of any contract, without even knowing those terms ahead of time.
I REFUSE to give up control over my computer to any site on the internet just because I followed a link to them.
What I do click on are those text ads that Google places on the side of its page. This is actually a convenience for web browsing. First of all, it stays out of the way, doesn't take any time to download, provides useful information, and leads folks to products and services that might actually be useful.
Therefore, I am saying that I have no problem with web site owners making money off their creation, but please do it in a way that is comfortable for the readers, too.
If you don't like a site's ad policies, then don't use the site.
What you fail to realize is that there is no such thing as "ad policies" laid out for the visitor. The site manager might have a business model, but how this is implemented is not the visitor's problem.
People seem to think that because something is electronically based, it's subject to a different moral code.
You have obviously not read the discussion; Try again.
There is no "moral code" for readers: If a magazine has a product flyer in it I can throw it away without even looking at it; The magazine publisher still got paid. The "moral code" error is on the part of the online advertisers which do not trust "visit counts" - and with good reason since the numbers can be fudged. So they count actual ad views instead (something that cannot be done in the magazine example).
Popunders are a case in point. Used appropriately, they can be a very good thing
Popunder ads are like the flyers mentioned above, except ten times as annoying.
But in the meantime, if you block ads from a site, yes, you are in fact ripping them off and freeloading on someone else's nickel.
Or, in other words: Web technology can not be forced to support our business model, so we will try to insult people and see if that works.
(If you want revenue, a programmer can set up automated ad "showers" and "clickers" for you. To the "web technology" it will look like any other ad view, so you should be happy. Yes? Ad blockers use technology to filter them out, you can use technology to pretend they don't. Remember not to "show" or "click" too often or the advertisers might become suspicious. And use different IP addresses.)
Good point. And even if you never see the menu, we all know that's how the system works; it developed over time and became a part of everyday life. The closest I can see with the web is a server. If I go park a server in your rack and start using your space, electricity, bandwidth, A/C and so on, I can jolly well expect to pay for it. Random, public content off the web is hardly the same thing.
/. are a great example. (It helps that I sometimes find /. useful. 8^) The first time I saw a Barracuda ad, I checked out their site. Within a couple of days, I had contacted them. Within a week, my free demo unit was on the way, and within a month we had bought that unit. We love it; it works as promised, they have great support, it makes our sysadmin lives easier, and our users are despammed, devirused, d dewormed, etc.
/. has real value, so I come here every day.
There are also laws regarding restaurants, precisely because people came up with reasons they didn't think they should have to pay. In at least some states in the USA, these are a subset of "defrauding an innkeeper" laws which go well back into English history, and tend to still be very harsh. There are no such laws governing the reading of public content on the net. There are laws to deal with content that requires payment or contract to pay.
The only extant contract here is between whoever is providing the content and whoever is storing and/or serving it. It's up to the content provider to come up with a viable system that gets their content viewing paid for. It's one thing if you can convince me to agree to watch the ads on your site; if I agree to that, I should be bound to do it. But my entering a URL and hitting return, or clicking on a URL someone sent me, of I found on google, or whatever, doesn't obligate me to anything.
Some sites (please note correct spelling 8^) have a reminder like "If you found this site useful, please support my sponsors". In such cases I'm fairly likely to at least look around and see if their sponsors hold any interest at all. In fact, I tend to do that anyway, if I find the site useful. If not, I'm unlikely to pay attention to their sponsors unless the sponsor has done something worthy of my attention.
Barracuda's ads on
HOW did this happen?
1)
2) Barracuda had a good ad, which wasn't intrusive (I will no more buy from annoying advertisres than from spammers).
3) Barracuda followed up.
4) Barracuda provides something I needed at a price I was willing to pay.
If all advertisers followed this model, which has worked very well for Barracuda, I suspect we wouldn't be having this discussion!
The only problem is, as Spurgeon noted, that 90% of everything is crap. This includes web content, products being marketed, and the advertisements themselves.
No one has agreed to the trade-off between content and ads, not even implicitly. It's a gamble on the part of the business owners, like many other things. Many stores and restaurants give out free samples, in the _hopes_ that people who were lured in will buy their product. If you don't buy anything, you're not breaking a "contract", it's just that their gamble didn't pay off.
If a business decides that they can lower the price of their product by including ads, that's a business decision that carries some risk. It's not a requirement that consumers must follow. If a business came up with the idea that they'd give a free car to everyone who came into their ice-cream store, they'd go broke. That's not "breaking a social contract", that's bad planning.
"Your failed business model is NOT MY PROBLEM."
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
A 'social contract' isn't a contract at all. You're thinking of an 'implied contract'.
A social contract is the thing everyone participates in to make society work correctly, and is not a 'contract' at all. They are simply polite behaviors.
You walk on the right, I walk on the right. Look, we no longer run into each other.
You don't be annoying with your cellphone, I don't be annoying with mine.
You tell me if you see me walk off with my headlights left on, and I do the same for you.
You refrain from killing me, and I refrain from killing you.
Etc, etc. When violation of a social contract causes serious problems, we tend to outlaw it. When it's minor, we just call those violators assholes and shot them the bird.
Now...I refrain from blocking your ad, and you...refrain from blocking mine? WTF? I have no ads.
'Social contracts' have no bearing whatsoever to ads. Ads are unidirectional, from a very small subset of people to the population at large, and hence they can't possibly be part of any social contract.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
So your agurement is "Because someone else does it, it's ok for me to do it" ?
/rant
Bullshit, the internet is a chance we have to make things different. Look at maddox he nevers put ads up, and he gets tens of thousands of hits, or what about Wikipedia. They are doing what everyone should be doing, I provide you this content for free, in return you provide your content for free.
When adbanners first came out, people were fine with them. Then more and more came out, pop-ups, pop-unders, spyware, everything. Had it just stayed at adbanners everything would have been fine. Now we are left with no choice but to block them. Most people don't block text ads. So use them if you must. But first think about what you are providing, is it a "I want money" or a for the public good website?
The internet is one medimum that corp's haven't yet taken control of. Do you want them to?
Or would you prefer the people to remain in control, and live by our rules, not the rule of the almighty dollar?