I mean, you're using moralistic arguments to defend a clearly immoral market actor whose entire business model revolves around abusing lack of regulations to collect and sell consumer information without their knowledge or informed consent.
You're defending a business entity whose entire existence is against your personal interest. In market terms, you are not a rational actor maximizing self interest. If you're not brain washed, what are you?
Just like businesses would be irrational if they didn't use every legal tax 'loophole' to make sure they pay no tax, you are irrational if you don't use available legal avenues to get the content you want for the lowest price - in this case, viewing it with ad blockers. If that means content providers go out of business, that's okay. New ones will show up with new business models that are actually viable. The free market expects individuals to maximize their self-interest within the confines of the law. If you're not doing that, you're just harming yourself for no meaningful reason whatsoever.
Again you spend so many words to say so little to address the actual topic at hand and instead shift the topic. This time to... doubling down on saying I'm brainwashed?
I understand your points, people don't want to pay (enough) for content, so content provider have little choice. I'd say it's the content-provider responsibility to market its content in such a way that people are willing to pay for it. That's what all businesses do.
If they can't make it, then it's no excuse to resort to creepy stuff like tracking and profiling people without their consent, or with them ignoring the extent or implications of it. It's nothing short of abusing people, and it being the last card not to get out of business is hardly an excuse.
You made a free mall analogy in another comment: if businesses can't run free mall without abusing customers, then don't run free malls; it's not like people always expected free malls, it's just that some companies began to offer products/content cheaper and cheaper, and now they hit rock-bottom. Whose fault is it? The customer for asking, or the businesses to enter a race to the bottom, and then going full unethical?
Again, I get your points, but don't track me, my friends or my family.
I thinks we need to remember the context of this conversation, I’m not against blocking tracking and not wanting to be tracked. I’m just against blocking ads then saying it’s taking the moral high ground and vilifying content creators who offer ads. I’m not even against blocking ads period, so long as we’re accepting the fact that it’s for personal benefit and definitely not “sticking it to the man”
The problem is we don’t have a protocol for signaling that they want to track you before you load the content and its tracking.
So you get the content, the tracking code, and detection for anti-ad/tracking plugins.
If they detect anti-ad plugins they say “We did give you the content, but we see you don’t have the form of payment we want so please don’t view it”
At that point, to me, neither side has done anything wrong. Would it be preferable if they could give you the “please don’t view it” message upfront? Definitely. But instead they let you opt out.
Once you decide to modify the paywall away and view the content you still haven’t done anything wrong but you’re saying “I want to view content paid for by showing people ads that was also designed to drive ad engagement but I don’t deserve to have to view ads so I’ll ignore your paywall since it’s my computer and you let me have the content” ... which is fine. And also won’t solve the actual underlying problem. Instead we just get an arms race of ad-block vs anti-ad-block (which anti will lose) and content creators hoping ad-blocking doesn’t reach critical mass.
The alternative is to turn down the content by going away. That sends the message that you won’t support the model. Bonus points if you pay someone willing to take your money in exchange for not tracking you since the most effective way to disrupt the market right now is to fund those trying to break out of the current model.
Not the OP, but the "brainwashed" angle applies to more than just ads.
Anyone with a Gmail account is effectively selling my communication with them to Google for a free service. And you bet that when told about this very few would see it that way. Consumers _are_ as guillable as they are ignorant. These new "established" online norms - be it tracking, profiling, ads, what have you - would've never flown in their physical form, but here we are in a world where Gmail, WhatsApp, Android phones, Google Analytics, etc. are considered gold standards of modern tech.
No sane person, if explained the exact ramifications of these "free services", would've agreed to any of them just 15 years ago. But they do now, giddily at that. Pray tell how this is anything but a brainwashing.
I wonder if this guy will look at this topic and all the counter arguments and downvotes and actually stop and ask himself if maybe its possible he is a bit brainwashed.
Half the comments are yours and aren’t counter arguments at all.
And all the downvotes just tell me people aren’t confident enough in their counter arguements to let them stand against a comment that isn’t intentionally de-emphasized.
And the fact you think I’d change my mind over downvotes, even in part, tells me something about you.
> At that point, to me, neither side has done anything wrong.
Well, tracking my mother who doesn't know enough about ad-blockers or the implications of being tracked is already wrong, to me. Collecting detailed personal information on people for commercial purposes should be strictly regulated, at the very least when it's done automatically.
> That sends the message that you won’t support the model.
We should send the most effective and unambiguous kind of messages: I like that content, but not the ad/tracking that you put on your site. That's much clearer than not visiting the site altogether (they might think they just have to change their content, or their marketing or sth). Some media are not fully aware of the crap they run, because it's run by a third-party, and the decision was made by another department etc. I don't necessarily want to send a bad signal to everyone there.
You're defending a business entity whose entire existence is against your personal interest. In market terms, you are not a rational actor maximizing self interest. If you're not brain washed, what are you?
Just like businesses would be irrational if they didn't use every legal tax 'loophole' to make sure they pay no tax, you are irrational if you don't use available legal avenues to get the content you want for the lowest price - in this case, viewing it with ad blockers. If that means content providers go out of business, that's okay. New ones will show up with new business models that are actually viable. The free market expects individuals to maximize their self-interest within the confines of the law. If you're not doing that, you're just harming yourself for no meaningful reason whatsoever.