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Looks like the war against advertising is continuing to fail, predictably. Google Chrome is now
banningrestricting ad blockers starting as early as next year. (1) I am not convinced this model of: create a free, ad-free service to get users --> slowly pull in ads for $$$ --> eventually become an ad-riddled hell is the best model. I often balk at paying for services up front, but if a service as essential as google is now bowing to the pressure, when will it end?Advertising definitely has some uses in connecting buyers to sellers, and informing consumers about the market, but I'm convinced it's a bit of a 'tamed demon.' If we don't want to devolve into a horrid anarcho-capitalist future, we need to get serious about restricting what advertisers can do, and where they can advertise. I predict advertising will become far more ubiquitous with the rise of Dall-E and similar image producing AIs. The cost of creating extremely compelling, beautiful ads will plummet, and more and more of our daily visual space will become filled with non stop advertising.
On top of this, we have Meta and other tech oligarchs attempting to push us all into the Metaverse. I am no detractor of AR/VR, in fact I think utilized correctly it could solve many of our current problems. However if the Powers That Be take over the metaverse, we will soon have ads that engage all of our sense - not just vision and hearing.
Given how powerful advertising already is, can we really afford to let it run rampant in an age where we have such powerful technologies?
1 - https://developer.chrome.com/blog/mv2-transition/
Using ad-blockers is antisocial behavior and should be discouraged or banned wherever possible. If you don't want to consume content that contains ads, don't consume the content if it contains ads. Simple as.
Advertiser supported content makes it possible for a much broader array of content creators to make a living producing commercially viable products. A world without advertising is a world with more paywalls and fewer creators making a living. See the decline of the newspaper for what content creation looks like without advertising dollars: fewer writers making a decent living, higher prices for less content, increasingly desperate catering to a tiny demographic target.
If you don't want advertising on your TV, don't watch OTA TV, limit your viewing to paid streaming services that don't show ads. If you don't like youtube ads, subscribe to premium. If you don't like reading essays with pop up ads, pay for a newspaper subscription, or if you're too cheap for that go to the library and read it for free. If you expect to google "How to fix my sink when it gurgles" and find the answer for free, you have to expect that the ads on the side of the page are paying the guy to make it.
If you think that putting advertising in your face is wrong, vote with your feet/wallet/eyeballs: reward content producers that offer alternative models. If content producers find that they're losing customers when they put up obnoxious ads, they'll stop doing it.
Can anyone offer me an argument in favor of ad-blockers that doesn't amount to some kind of misanthropic "The system, man, it's broken; so whatever I do against the system is a-ok"? I really can't even create a steelman for the ad-block position. I can understand the logic of not liking to be tracked, sure, and I find that a somewhat reasonable ask; but not viewing any ads that pay for the content you consume is just expecting the world to provide you with something free of charge.
I would say this is a bit of a strawman. Most privacy advocates I have spoken with tend to be quite reasonable, despite the portrayal of the media.
My steelman would go something like this: The system is good but has flaws, and needs individuals to take a stand to correct it. I am all for advocating against advertising models, and do vote with my feet/wallet/etc in many ways. However, I think that advertisers have far more money, capital, and influence than I could ever hope to achieve.
My basic issue is that people's attention, time, ability to focus, and overall mental state is a valuable commodity. It should have a much higher value than it does now, but there's been a market failure somewhere along the way in the 'attention market' so to speak.
While I don't advocate all actions against 'The System,' I do think that if you find a service to be severely corrupt, opting out of that service can be excused morally. I'm more of a utilitarian, so it may be easier for me to justify than many. That being said I would stop well short of for instance thinking political violence is legitimate.
This is certainly true, as I nodded to in my original post advertising is actually excellent for a market, but similar to banking, needs some sort of strong regulatory framework to be best used. To be clear I'm not advocating for full eradication of advertising, I'm advocating the position that advertisements are currently highly effective, and they will become far more effective in the future. We need to have a discussion about where we draw the line, preferably before the line gets crossed. That may be at the level of advertisement we have today, it may be at a different spot. But too few people know or care about how effective ads are.
Also, it seems to me that the general quality of writers/artists/etc has gone far down in recent years. Perhaps we need a higher bar for people making a living doing these things. This would also hopefully push more people into more economically useful fields.
I appreciate your reply.
Using AdBlock isn't opting out of the service, it's opting out of paying for it. I see no way to justify adblock that wouldn't also easily justify, say, turnstile jumping ("I should be able to move about the city without paying so much, the corrupt mta system shouldn't make me pay") or looting/shoplifting ("capitalism demands too much of 'people's attention, time, ability to focus, and overall mental state [, which] is a valuable commodity' be devoted to work, so I'm opting out of capitalism and just taking this TV"].
Moreover, AdBlock doesn't help create a conversation about advertising limits, it delays the necessary conversation. If everyone has to deal with ads or pay for paywalled content, the sooner it will become apparent you're better off with a freemium substack (Blocked and Reported) than trying to go free and ad supported (The Huberman Lab). Or whatever as the case may be.
I still see no grappling in your post with the question of property rights. Not to get all "you wouldn't download a car" but there's no justification for taking something, just an effort to claim that "the advertisers have more power than me." If you want great writing with no ads, go to your local library and read War and Peace.
I had no idea I was such a wild and crazy rebel and danger to society, and all achieved merely by sitting at my desk typing away on my keyboard and running an adblocker! Fight the Power! Death to da Man! Revolution now! Anarchy in the UK!
Is anyone else disappointed by how tamed punk became, with this doleful dirge all prettied-up in 2005 as the nadir? Punk and flowers in your hair? Who is she kidding?
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You seem to be arguing by analogy. Can you unpack the analogy?
Specifically, what arguments do you make against turnstile jumping and/or looting/shoplifting? And how do those arguments actually apply to making an HTTP request to server A but not to server B?
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We can make these analogies more direct.
Maybe the MTA is offered to anyone who wants to ride it so long as they watch the ads that play during the ride. Or maybe there are free items being offered so long as you sit and listen to a sales pitch from a sales rep.
And some subset of the people who ride for free or accept the free item and then close their eyes and cover their ears to avoid hearing the ad/sales pitch.
Still as bad as shoplifting or jumping the turnstile? Should they be forced to open their eyes and listen closely?
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Is your objection to the effect or the implimetation?
Many ad networks rely on specific domains. Some of these networks / domains have poor security practices and will periodically link to malicious sites or code. For variety of reasons I choose to have my firewall blackhole requests to these domains. The net effect is that ads in my network are dramatically reduced.
There is content I happily pay for. There's content I would pay for on an ad-hoc basis if there was a low friction mechanism. I'd be happier pay for content if it was priced more equivalently to my 'value' as an ad consumer. Typically you're asked to pay much more than your worth as a consumer of advertising.
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The service is being distributed for free. If the producers hope you're going to pay for the free service anyway, they can, but if their hope doesn't come true, there's nothing wrong with it, just like there's nothing wrong with going to a store and buying only the product that's priced under its cost as a loss leader, or skipping ads on a recorded broadcast TV program, or visiting the blog of someone with a tip jar and not putting anything in the tip jar. Or playing a free-to-play gacha game without spending any money on random rolls for gacha characters.
For that matter, the service is being paid for by the advertisers, but the advertisers only pay for the service because they hope the ads increase product revenue. By your reasoning, it's not watching the ad that you're obligated to do--it's buying the product advertised in the ad.
Just saying that the payment is mandatory doesn't make it so. Like the Supreme Court decided about gun laws, the only payment methods that are actually morally obligatory to pay are ones where there's a historical tradition of that sort of thing being an obligatory payment method.
See I think we have a strong historical tradition around this by analogy, the proverb: "You gotta dance with them what brung you"
Let's say a nice older lady acquaintance of mine I see at Republican party fundraisers asks me to the opera. "Well you see, I have this extra ticket to the gala, and no one to go with, and I know how you love Wagner..." Now I know she wants to sleep with me, and I don't want to sleep with her, do I have to turn down the tickets? No, that isn't the socially accepted opinion, I can accept the tickets. But neither am I obligated to sleep with her, that's a repugnant conclusion (sorry Blanche, nothing personal). At the same time, if I were to go to the Gala and ignore her, avoid her, and refuse to talk to her, most would see that as very rude. Rather, I'm obligated to give her a chance. You gotta dance with them what brung you, you don't gotta go home with them. By accepting the tickets, I agree to give Blanche a shot to pitch her product, I don't agree to purchase it. That's the social contract we agree to.
In the same way, an advertiser buys a fair shot to pitch.
But you know all along you are not going to seal the deal, as it were. So you're taking advantage of the free tickets while knowing you are not going to pay full price. Blanche may think that your acceptance means you are willing to go all the way. So it isn't just "a shot to pitch her product". If you go to the Gala. and are attentive and polite to Blanche but nothing more, and she keeps trying to get her hand into your trousers and kiss you, then I think you might change your mind about how much "dancing" you are willing to do.
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I already made the point about the strong historical tradition--this strong historical tradition includes the user not being obliged to look at the ads.
It was always okay to record a program on your VHS and skip the ads, or to otherwise skip ads in any way physically possible.
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This is a good point. I do take the free rider problem seriously, and try to opt in and support communities I genuinely believe in.
If truly pressed I would say that I find some systems to be so deeply flawed that abusing them is morally justified, which really just boils down to the fact that I have a strong visceral reaction to hate advertising for reasons I can't quite lay out in a logical argument yet.
The point of property rights is a good one. I'll have to think more deeply on this topic.
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