ad blockers are necessary to effectively navigate the internet
fandom.com is bad WITH an adblocker, i would never consider opening it without one
anyone who would seriously think using adblock is unethical is a bootlick
They certainly are. I met one of those people in the middle, and they also had interesting opinions on other things like immigration and women’s sports…
I’m old enough to remember when the internet managed to end banner ads, popup ads, and flashing ads…
I remember when the white box Google Ad Words(?) first started appearing in sidebars of sites and being creeped out that they kind of knew what I was in to. Now that is everywhere.
I remember it before ads…
Adblock is digital self defense against malware for your pc, as well as your mind.
https://xcancel.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1569083806224715776
Advertising unethical
I’d say it’s not inherently unethical. How else would you find out about options for a thing you need?
How current the ad industry works however, can die in a fire.
You can just search for it, you don’t need ads for that. Ads is a really bad way to find out about options, because it’s never about quality, it’s all about appearance.
making an item accessible to being searched for is a form of advertising
How would you know what to search for? Some advertising is fine - a sign for a restaurant or industry mailers or magazines, “related products”, etc etc are all very tame forms of advertising. The problem is hyperintrusive advertising which has now spiraled so far into hell that it drives a model of data harvesting and content slop that’s slowly tainting all access to information we have.
How would you know what to search for?
Because of the needs I have, when I am hungry ill search for recipes or restaurants. When my apartment needs cleaning ill search for cleaning supplies, when I am bored ill look up what movies are playing.
I actually can not come up with a single situation where advertisement would be needed or helpful in anyway. I also do not have a problem with smaller advertisement, but in my dreams they are all banned regardless. Won’t be missing those.
Okay, to break down the point: search for them where?
I guess on the internet or in the store.
So how do people get on the internet or in the store? Heck, how do you know that the store exists in the first place (and if the store doesn’t have what you need, what do you do?)
I’m just after a middle ground - the current insanity of advertising is obviously too much, but the idea of doing away with it entirely isn’t feasible either. Burning all the advertising execs at the stake might be a good place to start in terms of reforming things…
I see what you’re saying, but the obvious distinction here is that if someone is actively searching e.g. Google for a product, they don’t mind being shown products (and by extension being advertised to) - they’re actively seeking it out. What everyone has a problem with is being shown advertisements for products when they aren’t seeking them out and in fact actively want to avoid them.
Thank you! The unending intrusiveness of modern advertising really has killed and buried the useful parts of advertising by becoming the norm, I wholeheartedly agree.
In the ancient days we had a thing called the yellow pages.
Just FYI, any entry in the Yellow Pages other than the plain text, non-bold, name+phone number format entries were also paid for advertisements.
Yeah, exactly!
The search results are ads. If I’m looking to buy a table, those don’t inherently come with a webpage. The website in its entirety is an ad.
Consent is a key factor.
If you mail me an ad? Fuck you.
If I search out your service and find you? Okay. Though people game this system obviously. Google used to fight back against this but now they don’t care and even have just given in, allowing pay to play. So fuck that too
I think an even more important aspect to me is something I don’t have a good term for, but something like honesty/intrusiveness. The key issue is that advertisement should be an honest, truthful, non-deceitful representation of a good/service. But instead ads are designed to catch your eye, insert themselves into your thoughts with catchy music, play on your emotions even using kids, all while avoiding really telling you what they’re about.
On the note of consent, it reminds me of a certain website for webnovels, which hosts ads submitted by users, for their own novels. It’s been kind of ruined by GenAI, but it feels very different when the ads are often badly made memes about the premise of the story, since that’s what you’re already on the site for and it’s the actual authors wanting to share their stories.
I walk to the store, I check what’s there, I ask an employee for help, then make my own decision. If it’s shit, I don’t get it again and tell who I know to avoid it. I don’t get products that people I trust have had bas experiences with.
Advertisements are lying. Every dollar spent on marketing is a dollar that could have been spent either improving your product or paying your staff. If you advertise to me, I will actively avoid your product.
You walk to what store? How do you know the store exists? How do you know what the store sells? What if you live in a small town that doesn’t have a store that sells the required thing? How do you know where to drive to to? All this basic information about the store itself is coming from advertising. It’s not just about popups annoying you online.
When I moved to my current town, the first thing I did was figure out where all the grocery stores, the post office, and the library are. Do you really rely on advertising to tell you what to do? You can just see grocery store and say, “Yes, they probably sell cheese” and then go in?
Ok, what store do you go to in your town for specialized tools to fix your car?
The auto parts store across the street from the grocery store
It sounds like you’re considering the sign above a store to be an advertisement.
It is. Why do you think store logos aren’t just a plain text sign on the door? That would be far cheaper for the store to do.
…yes?
I mean, that’s why mattress stores have so many physical locations. They’re the closest thing to a clickable ad IRL, since they mostly exist as oversized billboards with a store attached
So you look for items in blank white cardboard boxes that only have a technical definition of the item contained inside?
Logos and packaging are advertising the product inside. Your friends recommending you a product is advertising that product. A company having a website is advertising. The grocery store advertising that an item is on sale is…advertising. It’s all advertising.
What we actually hate is intrusive and malicious advertising as well as false advertising. Like billboards. Fuck billboards.
it’s inherently unethical to me because these companies have decided without my consent that they’re entitled to my attention
Let’s say I go to an Invasion Day rally where thousands of people are protesting against the current date of Australia Day because it celebrates colonialism. I bring with Me a stack of flyers about the pro-Palestine rally in two weeks. I hand them out to protesters and say “There’s more colonialism happening right now in Palestine. Come to this protest too.”
- Am I advertising?
- Is it ethical?
Advertising is attention rape
don’t think this is how bell curves work
No? If you were to map out the general population’s intelligence, wouldn’t it come out on a bell curve just like this?
the majority does not think adblock is unethical
Some local news sites in my city show local ads that are simply static images loaded in their pages, mimicking traditional newspaper ads, without any kind of tracking. Although it’s questionable at a philosophical level if ads can be ethical, I can live with it, and that method will pass automated adblockers, so it’s a win-win.
You know, I think I’d be okay with that. As long as it’s not something that’s begging for your attention or trying to get you to click on it.
Or loading at random intervals so you have to scroll around to find where you were before the page jumped around. Very little infuriates me more.
I could almost live with ads if they were static, but the typical article-reading experience without afblock goes like this:
See the first paragraph. Start reading. An autoplay video pops in at the top of the page obscuring the view. You scroll down but it’s pinned to the top of the viewport. You close it with the miniscule x button. You finish the first paragraph and scroll down past a huge ad to the next paragraph. A banner ad appears at the bottom of the page. You dismiss it with the x. You start reading and two seconds later the banner you dismissed reappears with a new ad, obscuring the content again. You try to dismiss it, but miss and open the ad. Press back in the browser and start again from step 1.
Its exhausting, and it’s so painfully constrained, like trying to view a webpage by peeking at it through someone’s letterbox.
The Internet with ads, as it stands, is not worth seeing.
Not to mention it greatly lowered the quality of content. Now it’s 95% getting a catchy clickbate title with the actual body often not even agreeing with the title. It’s fucking exhausting.
I think the biggest issue with personalised ads is that they can exploit weaknesses in people are prevent public discourse about themselves (since they’re different for everyone), which is especially bad for political ads. So these ads that you’re describing seem good in my book.
Never met the person in the middle. Those would be in the 1%
who are these people in the middle
i do not recognize them
Largely bootlickers and trolls, they don’t exist in as great of numbers as the OP’s post implies. The ones on the left are far FAR more common.
Ads are violence on the mind.
Adblocking is good security.I habe been at all three of these stages in my life, so this seems pretty accurate
i’m quite curious about your “adblock unethical” phase because… the fuck?
The only argument ive seen with any weight is for content creators whose revenue stream is ad dependent, and even then sorry not sorry im not turning off ublock
Seriously, the fuck? In what world is it unethical to opt out of having trash thrown in my face?
Old bit of computer lying around? Adguard DNS baby
Hell yeah. I like it better than PiHole, but that’s basically just personal preference.
Adblockers came up in conversation with a (non-techie) friend the other day and they said they don’t have one because they are afraid they’d “get the wrong one” or end up with a virus trying to download “something like that” because they’ve had trouble with those shady download websites that have a ton of fake download buttons… Like, they look at adblocker as if it is the most scandalous form of piracy or something.
Ad networks are known to be a large distributor of malware and scams.
it’s prudent to block ads.
