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The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking
An anonymous reader writes "There has been some recent coverage of the over-hyped boycott of Firefox, in response to the rising popularity of the Adblock Plus Firefox extension. A recent editorial on CNET looks into the issue, and explores the moral and legal issues involved in client-side web advertisement blocking. Whereas TiVo users freeload on the relatively fixed broadcasting costs paid by TV networks, users of web ad-blocking technology are actively denying website owners revenue that would otherwise go to pay for the bandwidth costs of serving up those web pages. If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft? Is this right? "
If things weren't so horribly intrusive and capable of tracking a user's entire internet experience, for the sole purpose of selling you stuff, people wouldn't bitch.
I'd like to live in a fantasy world where I'm simply entitled by default to ad revenue, and I only have to deal with insidious "users of web ad-blocking technology" who are "actively denying" me my solid gold razor scooter. Fortunately for users, in the real world, a webmaster has to earn ad revenue by finding content that users want and ads they are willing to accept -- not by taking it for granted that they will just gaze longingly into the CRT clicking on everything that swirls.
For a long time, advertisers were able to support a huge number of frivolous web sites, partly because they could bombard the user with page after page of obnoxious flashing garbage for which no technical countermeasures existed. The collapse of the dot-com bubble eliminated the most unviable popup-pushers, and the rest are beginning to get the message. Popup blockers are normal mainstream software, and Google has had significant success selling all-text advertisements.
The website owners seem to think that we've pushed back hard enough, and should just deal with the sea of repellant Flash banners they want to drown us in. I guess those website owners are wrong, because clearly there are plenty of people who are not willing to tolerate the barrage of useless ads. We'll find a balance eventually, somewhere in between no ads at all and the websites whose masters believe they are entitled to a tithe every time their server sends a 200 status.
What's next step? Forcing people to actually look at the adds? Or press at it? Or are you a thief if you don't buy a product of an advertiser of a web page you visit?
There's no promise when I visit a site I will download what you offer. Images, CSS, Javascript, Flash, etc are all OPTIONAL. If I choose to save bandwidth by not downloading them, there is nothing morally wrong with that choice.
If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft?
No more theft than it would be if you were viewing web content with a browser that couldn't physically render the content. What if everyone used Lynx, for example?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Those poor innocent spammers need to pay (somewhere, at some level, be it money for bandwidth or time to write the virus..) to send you those viagra ads .. if we block those messages, and never see them, is it theft of some kind from the spammers or the viagra company?
I fail to see how using Firefox to ignore the ad banners and such is morally any different than throwing out the advertising supplements to the newspaper without glancing at the ads therein.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Going to the bathroom during TV commercials is theft!
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
No, it is not theft. I ask a server for a page and it gives it to me. I control which parts of the page will load and which parts won't. If websites don't like it, then they need to find a better business model.
When advertisers stop thinking me as "a consumer who needs to be trained to consume more" - I'll start giving a damn about what they have to say.
"Our revenue model is broken, and exploiting said brokenness should be illegal."
Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
As far as I understand it, the pay-per-view advertising model has gone the way of the dodo, and they're all pay-per-click now. Telling me I have to let the ads through on a site, when I have zero intention of ever clicking on them, is pointless. In fact, since I'm never going to click on them, by not displaying them, I'm saving the advertiser bandwidth.
Liberty in your lifetime
and it's why I don't use AdBlock...
But people are going to be paid to write good articles about products, instead of advertising. Your beloved Engadgets and Gizmodos will write articles saying "THIS THING IS AWESOME", paid for by the manufacturer. They won't be making any ground with traditional advertising since we are blocking it all. Tivo removes the ads as well.
So you are going to have to make a choice... do you want simple ads on the side that accompany your article or TV show, or ones that are embedded into them, and influence them? You can't have it both ways, and at some point marketing/ad companies will realize they are losing money because of Firefox and try alternative methods of syndicating their content. Probably at our expense.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
No. If you do not get the reaction you expected from me, then you have simply lost that portion of your investment. I have not stolen anything from you.
Next up on Slashdot, if she won't blow you after you buy her a drink, is she guilty of "theft of resources"?
Bah, that's as bad as calling copyright infringement theft.
Are we going to start getting take down notices from ad agencies now too due to this twisted logic?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You know, before TiVo people used to skip ads by (1) going to the bathroom, (2) getting a snack, (3) changing the channel, or (4) talking. Does that make OTA tv-watchers freeloaders too?
This attitude is irritating. Over the air content is provided for free. There is nothing that says "to watch this TV show you must watch the commercials." Same with radio. Radio content is provided for free. There is no implied contract that I must listen to advertisements to enjoy the content.
It is my choice whether to watch/listen to the ads or not. This isn't a question of morality at all. It's also my choice whether I buy a product or not. Does not buying mean I'm being immoral?
If a car dealer says "If you don't buy this car, I'll starve and you'll kill my family," would you still buy the car?
What about my bandwidth? They're trying to say I'm OBLIGATED to take everything on their page, not just the parts I'm requesting. I can assure you that I'm requesting their content, not the ads. They're forcing unnecessary bandwidth requirements (and slow load times) upon me by their advertising.
With a pipe, there ARE two ends to it you know.
Yeah, but when we use AdBlock we block ALL ads, whether they're obnoxious or not.
What this might cause, eventually, is for ads to be served through the same server and directories as content (to avoid URL pattern matching), for content to be served through the ads (like a flash file that provides both the ad and text content) or that ads sneak inside content (which they already do, in the form of sponsored articles, sponsored tv shows, on-screen banners during shows, etc.)
It'd probably be in the best interest of consumers to find a good middle ground.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
A casino has a cheap buffet because they *hope* you are going to gamble before/after you eat. You, being a clever person, attend the buffet and leave without spending a dime on the slot machines.
Arby's has a "five for five" deal where you buy five items for five bucks because they *hope* you will spend five dollars instead of, say, two dollars. You, being a clever person, realize you only want two of the five items, so you spend $2.50 on two items and leave.
Circuit City sells printers for only $30 because they *hope* you are going to pay $20 for a high-margin Monster Cable. You, being a clever person, buy the cheap printer and purchase a generic cable for $2 from Fry's.
CNN.com offers their content for free because they *hope* you will click on their ads (or at least glance at them) while you visit. You, being a clever person, ignore the ads or disable them outright.
The point is, any free or below-cost business model is a risk that the provider has accepted, and they are inherently providing these extra "benefits" at *no obligation* to the consumer. If the provider isn't willing to run the risk of people not following their suggestions, then it is time to turn that suggestion into an obligation (pay websites, or otherwise restricted-access websites). This is not a morality issue for the consumer, it is a business issue for the provider.
Right, and web sites are free to redirect freeloading firefox users to a different site if they please, so they're not donating their content and bandwidth for free.
PLONK! goes that ad-server's IP!
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
For the last 100 years it never occurred to advertisers on radio stations that users who turn down the sound during commercials were "stealing" from them. They knew better. They were given a license to use a portion of the PUBLIC'S electromagnetic spectrum as long as they operated in the public good. The public still has the opportunity to visit radio stations and read their license stipulations and leave comments about the radio station's performance.
Then, corporate greed took over when TV stations (licensed to use other portions of the PUBLIC's electromagnetic spectrum) started claiming it was THEIR medium and that if you didn't watch the commercials but only the content they were broadcasting YOU were a THIEF. Absurd. They can transmit content and commercials but no one, absolutely NO ONE, has to watch every photon they transmit during any particular time period. That's the risk they take, especially if their ad content is so trivial or dishonest or begins consuming too large a segment of the time period.
There was a time when commercials took only about 6 to 10 minutes of every hour. Now they take 20 minutes or more, and in the case of Infomercials the full 60 minutes. It's NOT uncommon now for 6 or more commercials to run during every commercial break, with some breaks exceeding 10 minutes in length with only 2 or 3 minutes of show in between.
Infomercials should be outlawed. The cable companies are double dipping. They charge the advertiser for channel, and they bill the cable customer for "offering" the infomercial channel as part of the cable lineup. Are we stealing if we don't watch the Infomercial?
To make matters worse, the TV shows deliberately focus cameras on brand name advertisements and include product hype within the script of the show itself. And they not stealing time from us?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
It's your computer and your browser and your net connection.
On the other end there's another persons server, content and bandwidth. If they don't want to serve you pages, then they don't have to.
Everybody's happy.
"Your business model is not my problem".
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
I have no problem with web server blocking views. What I have a problem with is the *whining*. Block if you're going to block, don't block if you're not going to block, but for God's sake quit whining about how people view the pages you do serve up.
Chris Mattern
Especially when you combine it with the 3rd big problem of irrelevance. Web ads are very, very often for things you just don't give a shit about. TV ads are actually quite targeted, they get demographic information on shows and pick what ads to run based off of who is likely to be watching. However many web advertisers simply smear their banners over and and every site. Not to mention that many are borderline fraudulent.
I've found that when you have ads that don't have this problem, not only do I not mind, I can even be happy with them. Google ads are an example. They hold the record as the only online ads I've ever bought something from. More, I've done it several times. I don't mind them at all. The servers seem to be fully capable of handling the load, so they aren't slow, the ads are very unobtrusive and on Google itself blend right in, and they are very relevant to what I'm doing.
For example I'll search for something I'm interested in purchasing and rather than looking at the normal search results, I look at the ads. Here is a list of people willing to sell me what I want. The ad usually takes me right to the relevant page. Now that's useful.
However that's not how most advertisers want to do it. For some reason everything they know about advertising seems to fall out of their brain when it comes ot the web, and they believe that the answer is invariably make it more obtrusive and it'll work.
I'm sure there's some fancy latin term for this fallacy, but I'll just call it the War Games defense. (The only winning move is not to play.)
The parent poster is saying if an ad is static text or image--no flash--and doesn't track you past the single page displaying the ad, then it is immoral to block the ad. Interesting.
I say, my stand on blocking ads has nothing to do with the ads. My argument doesn't depend on ads being obtrusive or anything else. I simply say, I control what I download. I choose not to download from certain sources.
You see, I don't get into a debate on types of ads. I don't even really address the issue of ads at all. I just say, I download what I want to download. If I think I'll never have any reason to request data from a domain, I might use a HOSTS file to direct requests for that domain to 0.0.0.0 just to protect myself from any inadvertent requests I may make.
Someone who wants to take the position that there is something wrong with not viewing ads on a web page has to play on my field and explain why the ISP connection and the computer I pay for are obligated to accept someone else's data without my request.
See, if the ads were hosted on the page you were viewing, then you'd have a point...But they're not. AdBlock and similar wouldn't work if it wasn't that the advertisers served their own ads for the most part, making them super easy to block. I mean, if I was browsing with Lynx which doesn't even offer images, or hell, browsing with wget or something, would it still be the same?
HTML isn't like television. Television is 25 still images a second; there is nothing to filter out except the entire stream. HTML is discrete chunks, and I can very easily tell my browser that I only want to view certain chunks...It's part of the design. I can change the fonts on the pages, I can reset the background color. I can turn off flash or javascript. Don't tell me I HAVE to view it like they "intented"...Hell, using Firefox it's often enough that you can't do that anyway because of some IE only horseshit.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Adverts on a web page are sent to my browser as links, which my browser must in turn request from the appropriate server.
This means that each advert on a page causes my computer to actively send and then receive additional data.
This results in real additional bandwidth usage on my part.
If I am using any kind of metered access, or even if I am using unmetered access but with one of the major ISP's who arbitrarily enforce unofficial bandwith caps, then I incur a real cost for viewing that advert.
So, me configuring my computer to not waste resources in that way is no more immoral than the web site configuring their page such that viewing the advertisements makes use of my resources.
How exactly will a webmaster find ads that users are willing to accept if the ads are blocked and nobody ever sees them?
I'll tell you. By hosting the ads themselves. They vet the ads, they host the ads. They don't just rent the top of their page for every crap ad in the world to get thrown in.
Those ads say something about your site. If you're so willing to whore your content that you'll bend over and take whatever the ad company feels you outta take, then don't be surprised if people start blocking your ads.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Users don't have to earn jack shit. This is where you are completely wrong.
As a webmaster, you bear ALL the burden. I wish webmasters would wake up and smell the fucking coffee.
* YOU (the webmaster) signed the agreement with your hosting provider (A dollars per month)
* YOU (the webmaster) signed the agreement with the ad network (B dollars per impression)
* YOU (the webmaster) are responsible for bringing to bear content that attracts visitors (C hits per month)
* YOU (the webmaster) are responsible for technical measures that ensure that users can't get content without the ads (such that attrition rate k -> 0).
* YOU (the webmaster) are responsible to maximize your own operating profit -- such that C*B*(1-k) >= A.
No where in this equation is the user expected to do anything. You bear all the risk. You are in control of A, B, C and k.
Wake up and smell the coffee, you whiny assholes. If you can't deal with this, then you need to get a new job you lazy PHP hacks.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
"However, the owner of the machine has every right to block users who do not allow for advertisements."
Of course they do. They still dont get the revenue tho, eh?
As a general rule, non-descript advertising isnt something I block (like google ads, etc). If and when it is annoying it will get junked, and most likely, as sites with a high annoyance factor tend to try to work around the blocking, the site will get completely shitlisted and I'll go somewhere else instead.
Competition, in the information market, is a killer. Painful, but the publishing business needs to adjust to the fact that the industry is overpopulated by several orders of magnitude.
Frankly tho, some sites make me want to send the EPA on them; I wonder approximately how much energy that advertizing driven automated updates, flash video ads, animated ads, etc, consumes across the world. If you cant view a site without your CPU fan spinning up, then that's a fairly noticable unecessary and undesireable waste of energy.
I have adblock as well. My policy with using it is this: If the ad is annoying (lots of movement, flashing, etc) I will block it. If I see several of these kinds of ads coming from the same ad servers/domain (doubleclick.net for example) , I block all ads from those servers/company/domain. You want me to see your ads? Don't make them annoying, and don't purchase advertising from a company that displays annoying ads. Ypu want me to see ads on your site? Don't get advertising from companies that display annoying ads. I don't have Google adwords blocked. Feel free to show ads from them.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
In addition to the benefits of not having your window resized, obnoxious or undesired ads, etc. blocking ads helps pages render that much faster because you're not loading the undesirable bits in the first place.
Now some may say ads are small and don't take much bandwidth, the servers are not as fast as my connection may be, and I hate having to wait around for some ads.xxyyuuuxxx.com to get around to sending their data in the first place.
Incidentally, the Firefox security plugin NoScript does wonders for getting rid of Flash ads and the like.
So what's next, banning the use of hosts files?
Wasn't really addressing the moral aspect, but merely the technical difference between one server serving ads and a bunch of cross-site crap.
In terms of morality, that's a two way street. Other people have pointed out that, by blocking ads where you have no intention of ever clicking on an ad, you are in fact saving the ad company bandwidth. The ads aren't pay-per-view, they're pay per click. No click, no money, so, by your moral standards, even if I'm not blocking the ad, then I should click on it so that the site will get money.
Beyond all that comes my own feelings about what I should be subjected to. I go to a website to read an article to find that the article is spread across 12 pages, each page with its own set of ads. Clearly they don't care very much about my convenience; I would go so far as to say that they're treating me quite poorly. The question then becomes, should I add this site to my own personal blacklist? It will cost me nothing to ignore it completely. Or should I view it as the "printer friendly" version, which inevitably has less advertising. Or should I wade through 12 annoying, slow loading pages, simply because that's what they want me to do? Regardless of whether I view ads or not, my presence on their page constitutes measurable traffic that they can take to other advertisers to persuade them that their site is worth advertising on.
Frankly, I think most sites would far rather we block their ads than their whole site, and it comes down to that for me. Few articles exist in a vacuum; the internet being what it is, there is always a second source. Go to Google news, and you'll see what I mean. What linked story is linked from only one site? While content providers attach large offensive ads to their pages, spread their stories across too many pages, add annoying popups or animation, they can expect me to block their content. If they don't like that, they can block my access, and I'll go elsewhere.
I think they'll quickly find that they need us a lot more than we need them.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It doesn't serve the information purpose you mention. Advertisement is, almost by definition, biased and one-sided. I'd very much prefer comparisons, reviews and independent suggestions.
I, personally, very, very seldomly gain any information from advertisement. When I'm looking for something, a search engine works much better. For news about new gadgets, games, etc. I prefer (online) magazines to ads.
Frankly, I am convinced there is no legitimate use for advertisement, in the sense that it makes a positive contribution to society. Everything that ads do can be replaced by better independent alternatives.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I don't understand why advertisers have this idea that forcing people to watch their ads will do some kind of good. If I don't want to see your ads I'm definitely not going to buy something in them if I'm forced to view them!
There are a couple of sites I go to that are sponsored. That is, specific, RELEVANT companies support the site. The site displays the advertiser's logo and provides a link to their store. Guess what? I BUY stuff from that sponsor occasionally! I've never, ever bought something from one of these random, always changing ads. Not that I see them much anymore....
Where is it dictated by law that I must allow web advertising on my computer? I was surfing the web long before any advertisers were around. I was blocking ads via my hosts file long before ad-blockers. I was recording TV on VHS long before Tivo. If anything, they should be paying me. I don't like advertising and there is nothing that can legally compel me to view it. Personally, I think any web presence that depends solely on advertising for revenue should be banned from the internet. For a while, the internet was one place you could go for information without having to sift through advertising. The entire advertising business model lacks any sort of morality, so why should I second guess my choice to block advertising. The internet is chock full of deceptive advertising links and is completely without regulation. Unless the advertising companies will allow me to sue them for being to exposed to something that violates my personal morality and freedom, they can take there ads and shove it.
If the site serving the ads does not have to use the bandwidth to serve up the ads, then it costs less when an AdBlock user is viewing the content. Since Firefox/ad blocking are a minority of viewers, the number of ad-blocking users is therefore low. Hence, the majority of non-ad blocking (i.e., well, IE users), they are costing the site more money, while effectively subsidizing the ad-blockers.
Seems quite reasonable and equitable to me.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Drive-by malware installations. Floating ads that block the content until you click on them (with no indication what clicking on them will actually do). Ads that auto-play loud sounds that're highly inappropriate in an office environment. Advertising networks that try to do highly invasive user tracking above and beyond merely displaying an ad. Those are why I block ads, and why I'll continue to block ads. Those ads represent anything from merely a disruption to an outright threat to my system. I can't evaluate them after they've loaded, by then they've already done their thing. The only safe thing I can do is block them from ever loading in the first place. And no, a web site's right to put up ads doesn't trump my right and responsibility to protect my system.
Yes, I'm grouchy. BT,DT,GTTS. The whole line of t-shirts, in fact, in every color variation. Not interested in collecting any more.
Most advertisers use a pay per click model to pay the sites they advertise on. So, if I'm blocking the popups, doesn't that indicate that I am not interested in them and would not have clicked on them anyway?
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
In the end, a few things are clear: Users of advertisement-skipping technology are essentially engaged in theft of resources.
TFA assumes the position that if a website gets a nickel for placing an ad on MY computer, and I have a mechanism in place to prevent that ad from getting to MY computer, that I am engaged in theft of resources.
This is like saying if someone gets a nickel for every time someone else can park their car in MY driveway, and I install a gate to prevent that third party from parking their car in MY driveway, that I am engaged in theft of resources.
Website operators have no right to bitch and moan if I block their ads from MY computer, because while they insist that I am stealing if I do not permit their ads to invade MY computer, they are not offering to pay me rent or other compensation for the use of MY CPU, MY RAM, MY bandwidth, MY desktop, MY browser, or even MY electricity for sending me unwanted and unrequested material.
Seven or eight years ago I went through hell with IE in Win98, because there were sites that spawned pop-up ads, and those ads spawned MORE pop-up ads as the first ads were closed, and then the other ads were busy spawning even more ads, until the only thing I could do was hit the switch and turn the damn machine off cold. That's when I learned the magic art of disabling scripts. I cannot have been the only one.
There aren't really very many web pages with ads on them, at least since I installed Adblock.
I think there is a very limited legitimate information purpose for ads—A TV commercial for, say, a new menu item at a fast food restaurant does more to tell me it exists than quietly adding it to the menu. While I can’t necessarily trust a biased/one-sided/etc ad for any further information, they’re generally reliable (there are exceptions, but in general it works well) for telling me something exists (and, then, if I decide I care, I can find comparisons, reviews, independent suggestions, search to see if there are similar products from other vendors, etc)
Gas price signs (price advertising in general, really) are an example of truly useful advertising that goes beyond “it exists”. They’re one-sided in that they only show one station’s prices, but they’re much more useful than if I had to pull in and read the price off the pumps. They’re not making any claims that are subjective, so bias is immaterial, and having it in four-foot-high digits makes it easier to choose, from the street, which place to go to.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.