from Hacker News

The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

by kyleslattery on 8/11/15, 2:17 PM with 243 comments

by jpmattia on 8/11/15, 3:03 PM
I'm beginning to find the various articles about ad-blocking fatuous, and I doubt I'm the only one.
Ads served via a centralized vendor can be blocked trivially, and people are choosing to block them. You can make a whole lot of arguments about ethics, or you can just admit that it's a broken business model.
Worse, it is becoming apparent that ads increase the attack surface. Failing to clean that up will cause armies of IT folks to actively work against you.
Maybe the business model is that you're serving ads in a non-centralized way, or maybe you're serving centralized ads to people with locked-down computers, but good luck serving blockable ads and relying on the good graces of the population to unblock your ads out of charity.
by bediger4000 on 8/11/15, 2:53 PM
How is ad blocking an ethical issue? I get to control my computer, at least until some legislation passes that says I don't.
Even if I don't control my computer entirely, how about my DNS? I have a lot of the more intrusive domains (tynt, doubleclick, etc) set up as 127.0.0.1 in my dnsmasq config.
The "whose computer is it anyway" question seems key here. In order to make advertising possible, we have to take control away from owners. That seems like a generally bad outcome.
by agd on 8/11/15, 2:53 PM
people aren’t agreeing to write a blank check and give up reasonable expectations of privacy by clicking a link. They can’t even know what the cost of visiting a page will be until they’ve already visited it and paid the price.
This is the crucial point to me. How can I agree to a website's trackers before I know they exist?
by clarky07 on 8/11/15, 2:44 PM
I never used an ad blocker until the last month or so. Ive made money with content and ads before and I know it's hard to do. Sadly, things have gotten absurd lately. Chrome basically slowed my computer to a halt on an almost daily basis. The performance improvement from using an ad blocker has been tremendous. So much difference I have a hard time believing it.
As a side bonus I also don't have to deal with auto playing video ads and popover boxes asking me to subscribe to content I haven't yet had a chance to see if I like.
by mikestew on 8/11/15, 4:02 PM
In my book, it's no longer a question of ethics, at least not directly. Way back when, we all agreed that if I look at some ads, a web site will let me view some content. Fair enough, it's a proven model and though I might not particularly like advertising, I'll trade some eyeballs for some content. Way back when, maybe it _was_ a question of ethics. But not anymore.
What "we" didn't agree to was being tracked all over the web, malware being shoved down the pipe via ads, ignoring "do not track", and all of the other nefarious things ad networks have been trying to get away with. Ethics have gone out the window, if ethics ever existed on the side of advertisers. So I run an ad blocker, and I make no apologies for doing so.
"What about the little guy who pays for hosting with ads?" You mean the "little guy" who has to scrape couch change to pay for the site that contains his latest post about artisanal mayonnaise and her latest gadget acquisition? Yeah, that $100/year for hosting is really going to break her, might not be able to get next year's Apple Watch on release day.
The big boys and girls like The Verge and what have you? Well, using The Verge as an example, they could go under tomorrow and IMO the world would be no poorer, given that they've kind of turned to poo in recent days. I blame the web advertising model for part of their deterioration, but that's a long digression. Specific examples aside, what about the sites I like? I pay money to the sites I like, specifically Ars Technica, NYT, and the Economist (and some others I'm sure I've forgotten about). Some, like Daring Fireball, use unobtrusive, single-image ads that I'll occasionally click on because they interest me, as well as a desire to reward a job well done.
But at the end of the day, the whole thing isn't my problem. If a few bad actors (or, in reality, a lot of bad actors) want to crawl into my machine and have their way, I'm blocking all of them. If there's collatoral damage because of some bad actors, it's not my job to fix it. I did my part and said, "no, you don't". Don't lay the onus on me to play nice, because you're berating the wrong party.
by qopp on 8/11/15, 3:46 PM
"What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues." -- https://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics....
Kant 1st Imperative -- Violates -- If everyone used Adblock, many websites would shutdown. I.e. "Adblock is okay because sites can still run if just some people do it" -- cannot be universally applied, contradiction
Kant 2st Imperative -- Violates -- You treat website developers as a means to an end -- to get content, instead of rational human beings who, given a sufficient outcry against their ads, could change their ad service or offer a different model.
Utilitarianism -- Violates -- Ad Revenue - Well being of site owner: -Site Costs / Visitors + Ad Revenue For just you. Well being of you: Site benefit - time wasted * time value. (Blocking "Ad will play for x seconds" in this specific ethical system might not violate)
Rule Utilitarianism -- Violates -- Well being of site owners: Cannot make ad supported sites, current ad supported sites -site cost. Well being of society: Less websites -- more inefficiency and less units of entertainment good.
Social Contract -- Violates -- People accept ads knowing that others will do this as well and this supports the site. Another: Site owners create sites relying on users's ability to see them and thus pay for site creation.
Virtue Ethics -- Violates -- You might feel more shame being in a room with someone who made a site supported by ads and showing them that you use adblock then if you were invisible to the site owner.
The systems above are the ethical systems allowed in the book "Ethics for the Information Age (6th Edition)" by Michael J. Quinn (the list is his, but not the theories themselves, just mentioning my source to show I'm not cherry-picking ethical systems)
by seiji on 8/11/15, 2:51 PM
Before the web, people changed channels or got up during TV commercials,
Many people still don't realize it's trivial to have a DVR automatically skip commercials, but advertising companies and TV networks sued TiVo to make sure they will never implement it.
Modern web ads and trackers are far over the line for many people today,
Not just "over the line," but for over 5 years now, advertising networks have allowed exploits to be delivered over their advertising networks. There's nothing like browsing a website then having a drive-by crypto locker installed on your machine.
As of 2015, blocking advertising isn't a moral question, it's a question of do you value your own security.
But publishers, advertisers, and browser vendors are all partly responsible for the situation we’re all in.
People say "trust the wisdom of the free market," but they forget the important part: free markets always become corrupt and always accumulate power towards the top. A market without government oversight and intervention is just a way to exploit and abuse people for profit with no repercussions.
It has never been easier to collect small direct payments online,
That's more tricky, isn't it? We've all viewed some article at a tiny city's online newspaper then been hit with a "SUBSCRIBE TO PODUNK DAILY ONLINE TO KEEP READING, ONLY $24.99/month." It's not sustainable for every small thing to receive direct payments and we don't have a clean disaggregation of a common "subscribe to internet publicans" pool (like iTunes Match, but for writing? Still useless if you get 0.00002 cents per page view—but, that's basically online advertising again).
by k__ on 8/11/15, 2:45 PM
We went from the "static" newspaper/TV ads, that didn't know about what you did with them, to "dynamic" web/mobile apps, that know exactly if you watched them, clicked on them AND eventually bought something coming from that ad. Also, which ad from the same ad-network you watched before, what apps/websites you used before etc.
Advertisement got much more power on the Internet and got much more predictable for advertisers.
But we also switched from turning pages or switching channels, if we don't like the ads, to blocking whole advertising companies with the help of software. We can now even prevent the ad from being "overseen" at all, because it doesn't even get shown to us in the first place. newspaper adds always hit your subconsciousness.
Both sides stepped up their game. Don't see any problem with this.
by Vintila on 8/11/15, 3:46 PM
Tangentially related but: I think the ethical way forward for ad-blocking extentions/software would be for it to self-identify [1]. That way if a website owner wants to block you or be more upfront about asking for donations, they don't have to resort to JS hacks to determine if you are using an adblocker. If they don't want me to see their site ad-free [2] I can either move on or decide that the content is worth a few ads.
[1] I only know the basics about the http protocol but I'm guessing something in the header could be added. [2] Which is completely within their rights as virtual "land owners".
by btbuildem on 8/11/15, 3:17 PM
Not sure how ethics play into this. If your service is of such low quality that nobody is willing to pay for it, and you resort to ads to support your business.. well, tough. Make something that sells, or try a different way of making a living.
People are blocking ads because nobody likes a firehose of garbage pointed right at their face.
To crank that tired old record, "this sector is ripe for disruption" aka somebody go already make an ad network stand-in where the user can pay the equivalent of per-impression cost and visit any participating site ad-free.
by logfromblammo on 8/11/15, 3:20 PM
I see ad revenue as someone who has an audience opening up access to that audience for a third party in exchange for a fee. It is entirely up to the third party to figure out how to get a return on that investment.
Neither the content creator nor the audience bears any responsibility to the third party to ensure that the opened channel is used effectively.
If shit comes through the channel, I'm going to route it right into the sewer. If gold comes through, I'll route it into my pocket. Either way, I still care more about my relationship with the content creators than about their sponsored side-channels.
The ads do not pay for the content. The content creators pay for their own content. Then they hold their nose and make a deal with shady web-advertisers to capitalize a bit more on what they have already done. Those advertisers aren't buying content. They are buying access to the audience.
by petercooper on 8/11/15, 6:19 PM
The bigger issue, IMHO, is quality of advertising rather than its presence. People pay $15 for a theater ticket and sit through 10 minutes of ads, buy Vogue magazine and have 30%+ of pages be ads, buy The New York Times and be hit with ads all over the place, watch the Superbowl specifically to see the ads, and more. What people seem to really want are better ads or even ads that are entertainment or content in their own right (which is why native advertising has taken off).
by brillenfux on 8/11/15, 3:41 PM
Maybe if ads weren't such a malware cesspool people would have less reason to block them.
The people providing ads do a dirt-poor job curating them, so blocking ads isn't about convenience but about security.
by arenaninja on 8/11/15, 4:12 PM
I whitelist ads on websites now, and I wish I could do the same on my phone. I think someone here or on reddit mentioned, and I had the same experience, trying out IE Edge and it being a decent browser, but as soon as the autoplaying video ads start, I downloaded FF, added uBlock and didn't look back. I use the same browser setup on my phone, and now and then I use some apps that emulate a browser (like Reddit is Fun or HN app), and the experience is wholly broken. I was reading an article and it was miserable - the fixed header for the site plus fixed footer for the ads took up about 1/3rd of the real estate, not to mention they were jittery and I couldn't focus because I'd scroll too far, then the ads would load where I was reading.
There's no ethics involved with me. Poor experience? Get blocked. Decent experience? Welcome to the whitelist
by edent on 8/11/15, 3:15 PM
Why is this becoming an issue now? I've been blocking adverts on-and-off for 10 years or so. Back then it was manually editing a HOSTS file - is it just in the news now because it's becoming slightly easier on iPhone?
by splat on 8/11/15, 3:36 PM
I used to use ad-block and later disabled it to support websites that generate good content, but now I'm going back. What's driven me back to ad-blocking software is that ad tracking makes it nearly impossible to buy gifts for a spouse. If I want to buy my wife a pair of sunglasses and google "Ray Ban sunglasses", guess what she starts seeing ads for all over the web. We noticed this a while back and would do gift shopping in incognito mode, but I've gotten fed up enough with it that I'm just going to start blocking everything again.
by anc84 on 8/11/15, 3:20 PM
How come everyone is using the closed-source, ad-network friendly Ghostery instead of the open-source https://disconnect.me/ ?
by bachmeier on 8/11/15, 4:13 PM
The current model can't work. The internet is becoming unusable due to ads. I am not sure how it will evolve, in terms of paying for content, but this is surely not the answer. I expect that we will be paying for content in some form. Perhaps a Spotify-type model where you pay a monthly fee and the fee is distributed to content providers.
On the issue of ethics, I'd say it's not ethical to spread out a small amount of content across six pages just to get more page views. It's bad for advertisers and for consumers.
by abustamam on 8/12/15, 4:47 PM
I think one of the big problems is that most end-users don't know everything that goes into displaying an ad (myself included).
Yes, we can say, "I consent to viewing an ad in order to receive X free service" in the same way that we consent to viewing a commercial when we watch TV or listening to an ad on the radio.
However, in those latter two examples, the information is one-way. Those advertisers don't collect any personal information (outside of perhaps our viewing/listening location).
When it comes to website ads, most consumers do not know/realize that a) the advertisers are collecting a WEALTH of your personal information and b) that information comes at a cost of your bandwidth (which, for many mobile users, is limited). There are probably many other things that happen between the end-user and the third-party that I am not aware of.
Sure, they may consent to viewing a free ad, but most of them do NOT consent to collection of information nor increased usage of bandwidth.
I am happy that many websites are now (at least trying to) put a visible cookie privacy policy, but I think even those little policies are getting banner blindness.
by frou_dh on 8/11/15, 3:35 PM
The formal name for the browser is "User Agent".
Your agent should act in you, the user's, interest. Decidedly partisan and so what? You shouldn't have to explicitly instruct it to defend you from surveillance and pollution - it should do that of its own accord from day zero.
Or is your browser a double-agent?
by hkon on 8/11/15, 3:26 PM
Nowdays content is there for the sake of the ad. Nowdays the content in many cases is an ad. Block that...
by gambiter on 8/12/15, 3:01 PM
I really truly don't understand why people this this is an ethical issue at all.
I personally own 12 personal domains, all for various content that I personally put up. Some blogs, some game servers, etc, etc. I don't charge for my content, and I don't advertise. I'm not in it to make money, I'm in it to share things with people, and I do it all out of my own wallet.
Why is there this assumption that all content needs to be subsidized by the readers? I mean, I get it... there's certainly value in compensating content producers for their time, and even allowing them to do it full time... but there is SO much content out there that is basically put up out of the goodness of the creators' hearts. Why can't we keep it that way?
by minimuffins on 8/11/15, 5:30 PM
"Ads help us to be more informed about what products are available to us" (paraphrasing)
A kind public service! We should really be paying them, but the advertisers inform us for free!
Asking about the ethics of hiding ads seems a little like asking about the ethics of taking shelter during a carpet bombing attack.
I wish we would steer these discussions away from economics (Do the ads work? Are there better ways to monetize, do they stabilize or destabilize markets, etc) and toward culture. What is the cultural effect of saturating the internet (and the rest of the world for that matter) with ads? I am not the first person to ask...
by seanconaty on 8/11/15, 4:20 PM
I'm glad someone wrote this article. I used to work at an ad network and for that reason, I've ethically chosen not to use an ad blocker. But I do agree that consolidation of tracking, over-abundance of ad spots and nasty performance have reached new lows that I've considered using one.
I think it would be nice if publishers just went back to <img> tags. Script tags and iframes and flash give to much power and result in lots of performance issues.
You can still track and consolidate with an img tag but the tracking is limited to what's in the http headers.
by LukeB_UK on 8/11/15, 3:54 PM
I have a question for everyone advocating the use of ad blockers: Do you just do a blanket block for all ads, ban the big networks with the trackers along with the malware serving ones or something else?
I understand wanting to block the ones with the trackers for privacy reasons and the malware ones because nobody wants malware, but blanket blocking all ads tars everyone with the same brush.
Edit: Personally, I used to just blanket ban but I've recently moved towards having uBlock only block the malware ones and will manually block any spammy sites.
by Animats on 8/11/15, 6:08 PM
The article is a promotion for the author's ad service: "For publishers who want to remain ad-supported, ethically and tastefully presented native advertising, such as sponsored posts in feeds and our community’s podcast ads, has proven to be more effective, more profitable, and less user-hostile by far compared to awful network <script> embeds."
"Sponsored posts" are in some ways worse than pop-ups. We can block pop-ups. Also note that "sponsored posts" that look like regular posts violate the FTC's rule that ads must be distinguished from non-ad content. [1]
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-re...
by serve_yay on 8/11/15, 4:00 PM
A good writeup, though I don't agree with the statement about web devs and browser makers -- we read the web too, perhaps more than anyone! :)
It's possible to want to make the platform more powerful and not like some of the ways the power is being used.
by drdaeman on 8/11/15, 4:07 PM
I wonder, what opponents of ad-blocking think about email spam? Is it different if spam ads are injected by email client? (some email and even messaging apps do this -- not to the actual mailbox, of course, but to the displayed inbox contents)
by romaniv on 8/11/15, 3:57 PM
Why do ads need to track you anyway? Doesn't it make more sense to customize ads based on the specific page you're looking at? It seems like this is rarely done. At least it doesn't seem that way most of the time.
by guelo on 8/11/15, 3:24 PM
It would be great if the ad business model on the web died. Hopefully the new business models that would popup would be more upfront. People used to pay 25 cents to read a newspaper or a few bucks for a magazine.
by faragon on 8/11/15, 5:23 PM
In my opinion, DRM will "fix" that in the future: browser plugins could not be able to identify those ads. So we could reach "Black Mirror"-like ads sooner o later. Brave new world...
by VLM on 8/11/15, 4:44 PM
The sale of eight-track players for cars is a violation of my government given right to an eternal revenue stream as an owner of a radio station and I demand "someone" do something about those evil (evil because they cut into my constitutionally protected right to profit) evil eight-track players cutting into my ad revenue. Won't someone Please think of the children, and the top 40 music boy bands, oh and most importantly my profits? I don't care if technology has passed me by, I have a good given right to profit as my manifest destiny and I demand those meddling kids stop interfering with it. Or else I'll... well, or else, yeah that's it.
by TheCoelacanth on 8/11/15, 6:07 PM
Any ethical framework in which it is unethical to take minimal steps to protect myself from psychological manipulation is an ethical framework that I have no interest in adhering to.
by eddd on 8/11/15, 3:57 PM
The average cost for displaying and ad is 0.005$. I am assuming that 30% of that goes to publisher. Would you pay 0.005*0.3 = 0.0015$ per page view? I would.
by Paul_S on 8/11/15, 6:06 PM
Ethics? You mean business. There is no ethical dilemma here, just a business model that might be not working as well as you'd like.
by Joeboy on 8/11/15, 3:48 PM
Aren't we just going to start making websites that don't serve the content until they've served the ads?
by harryovers on 8/11/15, 5:08 PM
People who support ad-blockers and support net neutrality don't seem to see the hypocrisy in their stance. If all net traffic should be treated equal then shouldn't advertising net traffic be treated with the same equality as content net traffic and not blocked by some software running somewhere on that network (even if it is running at your end of the network).
by RodericDay on 8/11/15, 2:54 PM
What I really can't understand, that permeates this whole discussion, is plenty of people that try to sell the idea that ads let us have content "for free", and that all we have to tolerate is "a little annoyance".
It's insane. If companies are buying ad-space, it's because they expect to get more business in return. This means that someone out there is being influenced by said ads, so that if the content cost X to put up online (hosting, funding its creation), someone is paying X+(ad company overhead) for it.
If these costs are being borne evenly, then it's complete societal waste. We could pay X for the content, and not incur the overhead. If these costs are not borne evenly, and some people are paying for the consumption of more disciplined people, it's probably contributing to terrible cycles of poverty (ie: some kid spending money on fancy new shoes he doesn't need and can't afford is paying for a well-paid tech-users YouTube habits, because it preys on their lack of education). Either way it's terrible.
Advertising isn't free. Insofar it works, for some people, it's basically coercive via psychology and simulated peer pressure.
by PopeOfNope on 8/11/15, 8:27 PM
Forget about advertisers and site runners and economics and the rest of it. I run ad blocking software because ads are too good a delivery mechanism for malware.
by Kenji on 8/11/15, 3:38 PM
Is it ethical to block articles about ethics of ad-blocking?
by charles2013 on 8/11/15, 6:17 PM
like OP, online ads (partially) put food on my table. but that's where the similarities stop: whereas OP mentions he's "never been tempted to run ad-blocking software before," i've blocked ads for years. and i don't just block ads myself, i advise my friends and family to block them, too.
what most of my friends and family don't know is web ads represent, arguably, one of the most dangerous aspects of modern web UX. ad servers exploited with 0-day vulns are one thing, but what worry me (and what i despise) most are dodgy ads that try to mimic/replicate some aspect of the publisher's web UI, and ads that fraudulently misrepresent other websites (e.g. fake facebook notification ads). many of these ads run on the biggest networks.
so instead of repeatedly telling my grandma that the buttons on certain sites aren't actually buttons for those sites, or that the banner with the facebook friend request isn't actually from facebook, i just install adblock on her browser.
i'm well aware of the irony and the double-standard. but safety first, right?