Well,you don't decide your own worth in this system. Your first mistake is assuming the only usefulness they get from you is when you click on an ad to buy something. That's a very naive view of advertising.
I think what you think you'll do, what you swear you'll do, and what you actually do aren't necessarily always aligned.
But that's also irrelevant. If they are paying to have pictures put in front of you for brand awareness, then that's what they are paying for,not ad-clicks. Assuming you can completely understand their business, strategies and intentions to the point that you can accurately judge what is best for them is not just naive, it's hubris.
The fact that advertisers will use things like 'brand awareness' and other subtle ways to try to get into my brain against my wishes is, IMHO, an excellent reason for blocking.
That's also a good argument for holing up in a cave somewhere and never coming out. The whole of human culture and communication is full of subtle cues and plays on how our mind works, and has been for millennia.
What matters here are intentions. Yes, pretty much every human interaction is a form of manipulating the emotional state of participants, often on an unconscious level. But most of the time people do that to facilitate win-win situations, to help each other. On the other hand, most of advertising and marketing is adversarial; companies and salespeople literally want to scam you. I think it is a reasonable stance to be against manipulation with malicious intent.
In a way, when it comes to advertisements, I do that already. I don't watch broadcast tv, I don't read newspapers or magazines on paper, I listen to BBC radio if I listen to the radio, I have adblockers for the internet.
Th world can be a quieter, calmer place when you stop letting people make sales pitches at you constantly.
That's an easy decision to make when you stop letting them make the sales pitches, but still take what they offer in exchange for those sales pitches. If you stopped the advertising and didn't view the content they offered in exchange, it would be quieter, calmer and a lot more boring.
I mean, that's kind of the root of it for me, this implied bargain - you get this stuff for free, just let us pitch our stuff to you for x% of the time - that's over, I reject it entirely.
Happily for me I no longer have the to make the choice of either putting up with it or not funding the content when it comes to most media.
The root of this for me is that you don't reject it entirely, you just reject the portion you don't like. You (like most of us, let's be clear) reject the pitch, but take the stuff. I don't really think that's right, but many of us do it anyway. I do object to casting it as positive for the ad companies and the content producers though. I think it's very clear it's not, and making that more clear to more people would make update of alternate content payment schemes more likely.
Otherwise, if you don't owe the content producers anything after consuming the content, why bother paying for something like Google Contributor? Just to help support artists, patron style? I don't think the uptake due to that will be enough.
>> The root of this for me is that you don't reject it entirely, you just reject the portion you don't like. You (like most of us, let's be clear) reject the pitch, but take the stuff.
There are sites now that block access if you block ads. I am happy for them to do this. But to get technical - on the web I request content and it is sent to me, I make no promises about rendering anything.
>> I do object to casting it as positive for the ad companies and the content producers though.
I didn't say it was positive for the producers, it's clearly not. It's positive for the advertisers because they don't have to pay for a 'view' that is useless to them though.
>> Otherwise, if you don't owe the content producers anything after consuming the content, why bother paying for something like Google Contributor?
I don't actually owe them anything as at the moment they don't charge, except in an implied way. They can charge, either by insisting I look at their ads, in which case I won't use their service, or by insisting on something like Google contributor or Patreon before I get the content. I'll say again, if sites make it clear I'm not welcome without viewing their ads, I won't go. It's OK with me. I don't think I find any online content or service compelling enough to change my mind on that, with the possible exception of Google's stuff.
>> I don't think the uptake due to that will be enough.
To be honest I don't think the uptake will be very high anyway because people are used to the current model and most don't object as strongly as me. Just as I think the number of people who use streaming services for the convenience probably vastly outweighs the number who even care that they enable ad-free viewing.
> I'll say again, if sites make it clear I'm not welcome without viewing their ads, I won't go.
Considering a needed mechanism for an ad-blocker to function is to be undetectable, they could be trying ten different ways to detect if you are blocking ads so they can display a note that you aren't allowed to view the content, and you would likely never know.
Or do you think they should put a banner at the top of ever page, inconveniencing every user just so the ones that don't want to view ads and are running ad-blockers have a chance to notice the content producers don't want them skipping the ads, after purposefully blocking their ability to determine if the message applies to them specifically?
Or how about we just assume that if a site attempts to display ads then they intend their users to view them? Is that too crazy to assume?
You are correct, in that currently it's a feature of anti-adblock killer and some other scripts/plugins with a similar goal, and I was conflating some comments about an adblock detector[1] and it's inability to detect ublock initially (most likely because it wasn't trying). My apologies.
That said, I don't think we're that far away from ad-blockers blocking detection. As soon as some large sites detect and bypass ad-blocks by moving to a ad source in those cases (or displaying ads in some other manner), ad-blockers will be forced to prevent detection to fulfill their purpose.
One of the reasons technical people use ad-blockers is because they don't want to download 10 MB of crap for a 300-word page. "The customer hasn't downloaded our crap" should be trivially detectable.
The people displaying the content (the site) and the people providing the "crap" (the ad company) are often different entities, with different servers. This is why ads are often served with javascript. Since the scripts that load the ads can change, as they are deployed by the ad company, there's not always a definitive way to know what you can expect to exist. Additionally, since there are exchanges and aggregators, you can't always be sure the same ad company is providing the script. This could be normalized, but anything that makes it easy to detect that the ad has been loaded form the page is probably also easy to detect from the ad-blocker, and trace back to something that needs to be removed.
>> If you stopped the advertising and didn't view the content they offered in exchange, it would be quieter, calmer and a lot more boring.
Not really, I already pay for my tv, music and radio directly (tv license, streaming services etc) so I don't have to be advertised at, and I'm seriously considering signing up for these various no-ad services for the web.
It doesn't have to be more boring without advertising, in nearly all media now there are ways to enjoy great content without letting the sales pitch in. I hope we find good ways with the web too.
> It doesn't have to be more boring without advertising, in nearly all media now there are ways to enjoy great content without letting the sales pitch in. I hope we find good ways with the web too.
My point was that it's more boring if you forego the content that has ads, and I think your use of an ad-blocker to access this content supports this position.
I also hope we find good mechanisms to pay for content without advertising, but I also don't want advertising paid services to go away. It does allow a freedom of access that wasn't possible beforehand.
>> My point was that it's more boring if you forego the content that has ads,
I dunno, I might get more done actually and have a more interesting life, but that's something of a philosophical point.
>> I think your use of an ad-blocker to access this content supports this position.
I think that if I didn't have one I would use the web much less, as I do find advertising that intrusive and awful now.
>> I also don't want advertising paid services to go away
I honestly don't care about them, I'd rather not have ads or the service and would be more than happy to see a model develop that blocks people like me from content if the advertising is that important to the site.
I agree it we would be better off overall with the ability to choose whether or not we wanted to see content if it requires ads, as that would make the choice clear to many people who I think it isn't clear for now. Ideally, I think we would be well served by a choice where we could choose to see an ad, or choose to pony up a small amount from a list of services that escrow these small amounts for us (Google Contributor for example) with the cost clearly defined, and the option to forego seeing the content entirely. Being able to set defaults for this on browser and per-site basis would make this really smooth.
My point is that it isn't always about buying habits, at least not immediately (and sometimes never).
Sometimes advertising is about awareness. Sometimes that's brand awareness, but it's also issue awareness. There are ads about social issues. They are often about making sure you are aware of the organization that put the ad out in case you want to get involved/help financially, but often it's also just to raise awareness about the issue.
In what way is a site showing an ad about children going hungry in America (as Hulu used to play quite often) and him not clicking on it scamming the organization that put the ad out? In what way is his blanket rejection of the ad before actually seeing it making helping that organization?
>> In what way is a site showing an ad about children going hungry in America (as Hulu used to play quite often) and him not clicking on it scamming the organization that put the ad out?
It's one 'view' (well page-load, because I'm not going to view it regardless) that's going to get them nowhere that they don't have to pay for.
>> In what way is his blanket rejection of the ad before actually seeing it making helping that organization?
Again, they don't have to pay for me to completely ignore them.
Are you trying to argue that I should watch all advertising that comes my way in case some of it is socially responsible?
> Are you trying to argue that I should watch all advertising that comes my way in case some of it is socially responsible?
No, but I think your view on advertising and the content it supports is hypocritical (because you still accept the desired content), so I thought casting it in light of a hopefully less nefarious cause might cause you to look at it more objectively.
The naivety I reference is specifically in your belief that you can correctly predict the desires of multiple large and small complex business entities in their goal to advertising in front of you, and make decisions in their best interest that are against their expressed desire.
There are many arguments for ad-blockers that can be put forth, but I don't believe taking the moral high-ground is a valid one.
> The naivety I reference is specifically in your belief that you can correctly predict the desires of multiple large and small complex business entities in their goal to advertising in front of you, and make decisions in their best interest that are against their expressed desire.
I think there is nothing to predict here - they have no goal towards 'Nursie, or any other particular viewer. Advertising on-line is done by carpet-bombing the whole Internet with cheap ads, hoping that enough people get hit.
How does that affect the argument in any way? They are willing to pay to have this add viewed by a visitor on a site at a particular time, and the site is willing to display it along with the content. Their goal, in the broadest and most general sense is to have the ad displayed. You can't assume they are trying to get you to buy something by clicking on it (it may not even be available yet), you can't assume they are trying to have you buy something later (it could be a brand-awareness campaign where you may not have a need for what they are selling, but you may tell someone who does), you can't assume they are even selling a product or service (they may not be, it could be a social issue awareness ad).
I stand by my assertion that thinking you know exactly what the intention of an ad that was is naive. And that's before considering that you wouldn't even see it in this case, you would just block it and assume blindly.
>> No, but I think your view on advertising and the content it supports is hypocritical (because you still accept the desired content)
I have said I will be happy to include a header in my http requests that says I will not render ads, and I already am happy to pay for content in other media. I will now explore that on the web.
At the moment, however, I request content from web servers and they send it to me. I make no guarantees implied or otherwise about what I will do with it or how I will render it.
>> The naivety I reference is specifically in your belief that you can correctly predict the desires of multiple large and small complex business entities in their goal to advertising in front of you,
They want my money. I'm well aware of this much.
>> and make decisions in their best interest that are against their expressed desire.
Well perhaps not, but in the simple case I will repeat - if I notice you're advertising your brand at me, I will not buy your stuff.
>> There are many arguments against ad-blockers that can be put forth, but I don't believe taking the moral high-ground is a valid one.
There are very many arguments for ad-blockers that do occupy the moral high-ground. Advertising is manipulative and it's not immoral to block these attempts at manipulation.
I do not accept that advertising is manipulative. I accept that many forms of communication, it can be.
> Advertising is manipulative and it's not immoral to block these attempts at manipulation.
My argument has never been that you shouldn't be able to control what's presented to you, just that if it's part of an exchange, if you reject one part, you shouldn't get the other. and I think casting yourself as actually helping the advertiser in this situation is a specious argument.
Well I disagree, because I take against advertising so much that by making me see it they would be doing themselves a disservice, and costing themselves money in the process.
And I'm sorry but I do think advertising is manipulative through and through. That's pretty much the whole point.
> And I'm sorry but I do think advertising is manipulative through and through. That's pretty much the whole point.
So is all communication. That friend you tells you about his morning, or some current event? He's expecting to elicit a particular type of response. We don't generally care too much, because we attribute good, or at least harmless intentions to their communication. We manipulate the emotions of those around us as a secondary communication channel.
Advertising is communication as well. The difference is that we often adopt an adversarial stance when dealing with it, because while most advertising is about the company selling you something and mostly harmless (if annoying) it's still informative of the product, but some advertising is outright misleading and can confuse the issue. Advertising isn't bad because it tries to manipulate you, but it can be bad when that manipulation is to get you to do something that isn't in your best interests (otherwise it ranges from helpful, through useless, and to annoying).
Advertising can be useful and helpful. It helps people determine what is available in the market and make a decision on what to buy or what to research. The name of a store on it's exterior, and the name of a site at the top are both advertising, and useful. You may have decided that you think this trade in information is not worth your time, and that's fine, but I reject any argument so simplistic as to say advertising is bad and possibly immoral because it's manipulative. It's too simplistic to have a meaningful relation to reality in this case, and thus has no place in this discussion, IMO.
Well,you don't decide your own worth in this system. Your first mistake is assuming the only usefulness they get from you is when you click on an ad to buy something. That's a very naive view of advertising.