IMO there's a moral problem with ad blocking, which is that it's basically stealing.
Like it or not, many popular websites and services online gain income from advertising. By using them while blocking their ads you're basically getting something for nothing by gaming the system. It's probably against their ToS (but who reads that right?). It probably says: We serve ads. If you don't like that don't use this site.
One might say that ads are distracting, annoying, resource heavy, and sometimes downright malicious. I think so too. However that is essentially the "price" of ads, and this price is known in advance. Blocking ads for these reasons while continuing to use the sites is not unlike eating at a restaurant and leaving without paying because you think their prices are exorbitant: It might seem morally justified but it's theft because the prices were known in advance.
I think one of the main reason people don't dine-and-run (yet install adblockers) is that it's hard to do a moral wrong so close to the source, e.g seeing the waiters, being there in person, risking an unpleasantness drama, etc. (This is well known psychological phenomenon which name I can't recall.) In contract installing an adblocker is fast and feels totally unrelated to the 2nd party. It makes it easy to feel like you're fighting the bad guys (ads and the terrible ad-tech) and forget whose revenue you are withholding for your own benefit.
Personally I resisted installing adblockers for a long time though eventually I caved in (ad-tech got really bad). I honestly don't know what the solution is.
It's certainly nothing remotely close to actual larceny, so when you say "stealing" I assume you mean "acquiring something in violation an explicit or implicit contract." I couldn't disagree more. If such a contract existed, it would mean that every time I download an HTML document, I am obligated to download and execute each resource, document, script, etc. that the HTML document links to, and to do so recursively for each linked document. This would include CSS styles and JavaScript that might make the page unusable for people with certain disabilities or on certain browsers and connections. It would also include all media, which could be slow and/or expensive depending on my Internet connection. It would also include all advertisements, including those that include malware. It would also include all tracking and analytics scripts, which may violate my privacy or even threaten my safety depending on my circumstances and location.
If this is not your argument, please clarify, but it seems like the inevitable conclusion of your claim that visiting a web page obligates me to download and execute other resources that the web page publisher desires. If, at the end of a meal, my waiter brought me a check and a USB drive with software that the restaurant wanted me to install on my computer, I would pay the check, but I wouldn't install the software. If, before the meal, the restaurant informed me that I could not dine there unless I installed the software, I would gladly do neither.
I don't see what the technical capabilities have to do with the morality of the issue. You might just as well modify a downloadable binary to neutralize license checking code to avoid paying for the software. Does the fact that you can do this make it not stealing?
If you want to exploit your technical capabilities to deny publishers their revenue, don't fret when publishers do the same with DRM, walled gardens and other such measures.
Current adtech practices need to be made both illegal and technically impossible, but that obscenity does not make ad blockers more moral. Two wrongs don't make a right.
No one owes publishers revenue. As a society, we might have some conditional agreement to restrict freedom of information transfer for some specific purpose like encouraging art, but if that purpose isn't being served well, or even isn't popular, them it is that same societies right to remove those restrictions.
Publishers are not merely "information transfer". They are largely content creators. Whether that content is music or news or something else, it costs money to produce.
Using that content without paying for it (with ad impressions or direct sales) when those payments make the creation you consume possible in the first place – there is no moral high ground in that.
By ad blocking you're just taking things for yourself while relying on others to pay for your share of the cost to produce the content you're consuming. Zero marginal cost is not such a big intellectual barrier to understanding that this is unfair and unsustainable.
People are quite content with ad blocking only because someone else has to pay for creation of the content they consume. Of course people are content getting a better deal than other people.
But you can't translate this individual selfishness into a general society-level desire because ad blocking only works when not everyone is doing it. On a society level, if you don't pay for something, you don't get it, because there is no one else to pay for it. Whereas what people want is to get something without paying for it.
And if you claim the society is in agreement that ad based business models are unacceptable, I'm yet to see any indication of that. People really like not paying for things with money, and ads let them do that.
But what people like to do even more is taking without giving in the name of some unconvincing ideology.
> However that is essentially the "price" of ads, and this price is known in advance.
No. The price is absolutely not known in advance by design. There's no way to me to audit which "partners" a site I visit will share my browsing data with. If ad providers were transparent about how my data would be used and who it would be shared with you might have a point. But most current TOSs leave the door open for tracking data to be shared with anyone for just about any purpose in the future.
It's as if I walked into a department store and the price on goods was unknowable - the store just reserved the right to take money out of my account at any point in the future but assured me that amount would be "small" with nothing contractually binding them to that.
I don't agree. If someone got a magazine, and before reading it they cut out all the ads are they committing theft? If I mute my radio while ads play, am I a thief? I'd bet that most reasonable people would say no. The content providers serve the ads, how end users interact with them is up to said users.
Ad blocking, in my view, is analogous to muting your radio. The content provider delivered the ads, how the user interacts with them is up to each individual.
> If someone got a magazine, and before reading it they cut out all the ads are they committing theft?
While cutting the ads you'll get such a good look at them, ads companies will be thrilled and beg you to do it :-)
> If I mute my radio while ads play, am I a thief?
The behavior of people watching TV or listening to radio is well studied. Here's some facts:
1. even if you change the station, you'll still see or hear some ads, especially if you want to get back to what you were watching, as people keep changing back and forth — and those ads are for brands mostly, therefore it's enough for you to see Coke's logo for you to pick it in a store as the "safe" choice
2. many TV and radio stations synchronize their ads breaks
So are you committing theft when skipping commercials? If you use automation for it, the jury is actually still out and there have been several lawsuits already.
Also skipping ads might be legal still, but there are always legal loopholes. For example circumventing DRM is not legal and it's only a matter of time before media networks wise up.
And note there have been other doomsday scenarios in the past. For example the rise of VHS was a similar event, allowing people to record shows and skip ads. But even so, ads kept being efficient and publishers and media networks survived. However this time the automation has reached a level unprecedented in history.
What do you think will happen if companies start going out of business due to ad blockers? They'll start lobbying of course and lobbying works.
For magazines you could have a friend or a robot cut out the ads, for radio you could switch to a CD while the ads run. Basically, I'm trying to get at the more fundamental question: do users have an obligation to consume the ads that are served to them, in the manner that the content provider dictates? And if so, how should this be enforced?
>Do users have an obligation to consume the ads that are served to them
Yes, if it's part of the content and they want more of that content. But they have no obligation to want that content.
> in the manner that the content provider dictates
They don’t dictate how you consume ads, they try to predict it and adjust for it, but they don't dictate your actions
>And if so, how should this be enforced?
Legally it shouldn’t be. The advertiser can do whatever they want to their content to get you to consume ads, but they shouldn’t be able to do anything past the boundary of their content.
There's a very simple way to enforce payment for content. It's called a paywall. If it turns out readers are not willing to work over actual money, then maybe the content is not as valuable as the publishers thought.
Oh please. That's about as dishonest and manipulative as calling copyright infringement piracy.
The real truth is nobody really cares about how much money these people are losing. We're looking out for ourselves because companies won't. Just because you're serving some content I may or may not be interested in doesn't mean you get to rape my ears with loud autoplaying videos I don't want to watch.
Are you truly implying I have no right to control what my eyes and ears and brain experiences? That I have to be literally forced to view and remember every single piece of content --- ads or otherwise --- on a site that I visit, just because the "content author" wills it!?
It is very rare that I will use such strong language, but to anyone who truly believes such things: fuck you, and I very much hope you will be the one someday tied into a chair and unable to escape with your eyelids forced open to watch and listen to a barrage of unescapable ads and answer questions correctly about everything you were forced to consume before being allowed to consume the actual content itself in the same way. Because that's what you're implying the world should become --- literally a form of torture and mind-control.
"Blocking ads for these reasons while continuing to use the sites is not unlike eating at a restaurant and leaving without paying because you think their prices are exorbitant"
Do we really have to replay all the arguments we had during the Napster days about the difference between rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods?
These analogies to real-world objects never work. If you have a case, it's not going to rest on "you wouldn't steal a car" type arguments [0].
It's obvious that piracy is also theft. But adblocking is worse: The damages of piracy are hard to measure (and are therefor overestimated by it's victims) because many "pirates" would not pay for the pirated, non-rivalrous good if piracy wasn't available.
However blocking ads (especially when done by prevent them being fetched) directly damages the 2nd party at a known price. Each individual pageview has a cost to serve it, and a revenue gained from it (via ads). In that sense what we're stealing is actually pageviews, which have (IMO) more in common with physical real-world objects (rivalrous) than a digital copy of a file.
> However blocking ads (especially when done by prevent them being fetched) directly damages the 2nd party at a known price.
Now what if I use ad nauseam and "click" on every ad on the site? Is that theft too? What if I'm blind and use a screen reader, am I stealing from the site?
Finally, if the answer is yes, why is stealing the other way ok? I don't recall any sites paying out victims after serving ads containing malware. What about sites (or ads) stealthily using my computer's resources for bitcoin mining? They're stealing measurable resources from me and I am not being compensated.
In a previous comment you called malicious ads "the price of ads" that is "known in advance". This doesn't seem fair. Why does the end user bear all the responsibility for keeping the ad economy afloat and healthy while the sites serving the ads bear none?
Edit: One last thing. If ad blocking is truly analogous to retail theft. Content providers and ad networks should be regulated just like retailers are to make sure they are not ripping off their users by serving malicious or harmful ads or using their data in ways not agreed to in advance (i.e. effectively charging users above and beyond the stated price).
Seems analogous to say it's stealing TV when you don't watch the commercials, or clipping out ads before reading a paper? It doesn't make sense. I have control over what code is run on my computer. Allowing one party to show me content and blocking others isn't stealing or even in a grey area.
Yep- there is a sports chat site I frequent that straight up locks out my browser when I come through corporate proxy- because they are blocking ad pages on proxy.
A very important distinction between theft and adblocking is that you show yourself the ads. You (i.e. your browser on your behalf) requests that the server send you an html document, then you go and look up all of the ad links and make requests to those servers. Then you download all of the images and texts from those servers and render them on your own screen.
Every step in this process is voluntary:
- What if I decide I don't want to make requests to the advertiser's servers just because an html document suggested it?
- What if I decide I don't want to render an ad, just because I downloaded it from somewhere?
Contracts, like the one you're proposing here, are agreed upon by both parties. I agree to download your ads, if you agree to provide me access to the site. Paywalls work like this, ads don't. Ads are a polite suggestion that I'm free to ignore.
Online content is the textbook public good. It doesn't compare to anything like cars, food, or computers. There is no harm from using an adblocker. It doesn't compare to normal theft in any way. You can argue it's immoral, but calling it theft and comparing it to stealing physical things is always bogus.
Online content is not exactly the same as physical goods, but it's not that far either:
- it costs very real money to produce, and
- it costs very real money to be served and to remain online.
These costs may be covered by ads, by subscriptions, by sponsors, taxes, voluntary contribution or anything else, but the they still need to be paid for.
Like it or not, many popular websites and services online gain income from advertising. By using them while blocking their ads you're basically getting something for nothing by gaming the system. It's probably against their ToS (but who reads that right?). It probably says: We serve ads. If you don't like that don't use this site.
One might say that ads are distracting, annoying, resource heavy, and sometimes downright malicious. I think so too. However that is essentially the "price" of ads, and this price is known in advance. Blocking ads for these reasons while continuing to use the sites is not unlike eating at a restaurant and leaving without paying because you think their prices are exorbitant: It might seem morally justified but it's theft because the prices were known in advance.
I think one of the main reason people don't dine-and-run (yet install adblockers) is that it's hard to do a moral wrong so close to the source, e.g seeing the waiters, being there in person, risking an unpleasantness drama, etc. (This is well known psychological phenomenon which name I can't recall.) In contract installing an adblocker is fast and feels totally unrelated to the 2nd party. It makes it easy to feel like you're fighting the bad guys (ads and the terrible ad-tech) and forget whose revenue you are withholding for your own benefit.
Personally I resisted installing adblockers for a long time though eventually I caved in (ad-tech got really bad). I honestly don't know what the solution is.