After some debate with Nathan, Jared and I, then some twitter posts today [quotably is cool], I’d like share my point of view here: AdBlockers are wrong.
Simply, they’re built to circumvent revenue from the site owners.
Before you point out that I have ads on this site; I don’t care if you block my ads. I do not count on any of that money on a monthly basis, those few dollars are a benefit or reward of having a blog. But, if this blog was my day job and I was trying to survive off advertising from my content I would be pissed if I knew people were inhibiting me from earning money from my hard work.
There are a lot of web 2.0 startups that would not be here if it weren’t for ad services like adwords, even the ones that provide subscription models rely on ads to cusion the overhead of providing a popular free service.
There’s a viscous circular argument of hypotheticals because web advertising is not like anything else:
- TV commercials: not a very good example because while commercial fast-forwarding isn’t illegal, commercial skipping is closely was(i.e. replaytv).
- Jumping a turnstile at a subway: it’s clearly illegal and blocking ads isn’t illegal by written law.
And that’s were I agree to disagree. Just because it’s not written law doesn’t mean it’s right (ethically).
As I’ve mentioned before I’m not trying to persuade anyone, make your own desicion. I use TLA on my site and a lot of people disagree; some say it’s unethical for the same general reasons I think adblocking is wrong and I’ve concluded they’re different.
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2 Comments
Glad you posted this. I thought of doing the same after my last Twitter post on the topic, but I had to take off right then and just got back right now.
I’ll give a quick summary of my opinion on the subject, but first, a discrepancy in something you claim above:
Please cite your source for claiming that commercial skipping is illegal. The ReplayTV case did not establish this. In fact, ReplayTV voluntarily removed the feature after the threat of the lawsuit, and a judge later dismissed the actual suit itself, so you’ll need some other evidence if you want to make that claim.
This is an important point since I believe commercial skipping (or even fast forwarding) is an excellent analogy to web ad blocking, while your example (hopping turn-styles on trains) is so clearly very different.
OK, with that out of the way, here’s my take on why web ad blocking is OK (in most cases):
I believe we’re hung up on the belief that there is an implied user contract between the consumer of a site (or TV channel) and the provider of that service.
The problem with that is (in both cases) the providers never explicitly state that you are *required* to view the ads in exchange for the use of their service, and the user consequently never accepts / acknowledges such an arrangement (since the details of such an arrangement were never presented to them).
Despite the fact that their revenue model - again, in both cases - does assume that most users will watch / see the ads, this “arrangement” is (1) never stated by the provider and (2) never agreed to by the consumer.
I understand your point on the revenue side of things, and that some sites do make some of their money from ad views. However, that is not my concern. Moreover, it must not be a *big enough* concern for the providers (at least at this point) either, otherwise they would at least add such language to their terms of service.
If a site that I have explicitly agreed to a TOS with (like Pownce or Twitter) were to state such requirements in said TOS, then I would certainly have to make a choice between using their service with ads and not using it at all (or unethically using it in violation of the TOS I agreed to use it under).
On the other hand, for the majority of sites that I visit without agreeing to any TOS, I’m in the same boat - having never agreed to view ads in exchange for the use of their site.
The way I look at it, if you want to be consistent with your “revenue robbery” theory, you had better go into whatever browser you’re using and disable the pop-up blocking feature that most major browser vendors have now built in to their browsers, because you’re preventing them from running their pop-up ads and stealing from their revenue stream. Let me know when / if you decide to do that, or (if not) how it’s different.
I updated the post but a commercial skipping law almost passed, it was thrown out of court because ReplayTV gave up and the lawsuit was dropped.
I had deleted a paragraph talking about the issue not being “big enough” because not a lot of people do ad blocking, I took it out because I couldn’t express my feeling that –everyone– counts. It’s like a vote, it does count and it does affect the whole.
Pop-up blocking is similar to the adblocking I’m talking about but I’m perfectly fine with blocking pop-ups for three reasons:
1. They’re intrusive/interfere. Pop-ups tell my browser to do something I may not want it to, which is different than displaying ads next to the content I’m reading or looking at. Pop-ups can also crash your browser or your computer because websites can throw as many popups and popunders they want by you loading the page.
2. Pop-up blocking apps tell you there’s a pop-up you’re missing.
3. If site owners want to get around pop-up blockers they can; easily.
Ultimately I’ve made the decision it’s fine for me because of the above reasons amongst others and if anyone disagrees I’m fine with that but I don’t think it’s contradictory to block one without the other.
Also, pop-up blockers produced some of the most absurd flash and js ads to screw with. I’m sort of worried what adblockers will produce; probably some integrated windows advertising model.