Most free web sites pay for their upkeep with ads. It has been an unwritten agreement since forever (or at least as long as there have been ads on the web) that if you consume the content, you pay the creator by looking at the ads on their site.
Consuming the content without looking at the ads is like shoplifting because you don’t like the way a store’s checkout counter works and/or the fact that they want money from you at all.
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Counterpoint: The checkout counter at the store doesn’t follow me out into the parking lot, grab my license place number and sell it to whoever wants it, or follow me into other stores.
Definitely an unpopular opinion, though! Take my upvote.
They may grab your payment info though, and use it to build a profile of you that tracks your spending habits to share with others.
Source: was one of the people whose cards had been compromised by the massive data breach Target had about a decade or so ago, because Target had been saving payment information on every customer to build profiles from.
Now I think the newer chip-based cards and tap to pay have made it harder to track customers, but that’s basically why every company is trying to push its own app these days.
- you pay the content creator by buying their content, not by browsing ads on their site – ads are a really annoying tip jar being waved in your face when you’re trying to hand money to the cash register
- advertisers have been given plenty of warning to behave themselves and they refuse, they are parasitic leeches bleeding both creator and purchaser
- adblockers are the effect, not the cause
- original websites were ad free
- banner ads were added and we tolerated them
- advertisers then added in distracting flashing effects, loud audio cues, broke security with Flash, broke accessibility
- adblockers invented
- advertisers shed crocodile tears and pretend to be contrite
- advertisers start pushing tracking, malware, phishing, crypto-miners
- adblockers are now as important as antivirus for the safety of your computer/tablet/phone
Definitely was one of the ones way back who said "If they keep it classy I won’t disable my adblocker. I want to say, generously, that maybe 10% of sites made ads that weren’t intrusive. Ad companies can’t handle themselves, they have to take over the entire page and distract from the content. It’s their own fault we use ad blockers.
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B. There are sites I appreciate which don’t allow you to pay to disable ads - so I sometimes take a look at one or two.There are others where the ads get annoying, so I stay away, or leave when I’ve had enough of 35 animations slowing down my web browser.
I have yet to see an ad that managed compromise the safety of my computer (knocks on wood). I am aware that this has happened, but I would be really cross with BitDefender if it happened to me.
Remember print magazines and newspapers? Ads pay a large portion of the costs of producing them, but no reader is obliged to look at any ads at all. Advertisers pay for a chance to be seen, not for an obligation for anyone to look at them. Since nobody has any obligation to read the ads, avoiding them cannot be a violation. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
I was working with a different definition of ‘look at’. When reading a magazine (according to my definition), you will look at the ad, because you never know whether a given page will contain an ad or editorial content. Your eyes will fall upon the ad, and then you move on, likely not really taking it in unless it manages to catch your eye. Same with me and web ads. Most will barely register, as the majority is really not that interesting - but sometimes, I will take a closer look, and very occasionally even click on one.
Where I live, newspapers come with a separate detached portion that are all ads. With your logic, I’m obligated to have to read them too and not just throw them out?
Using ads is theft (of my precious lifetime).
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Another translation of OP’s opinion: walking on the street without looking at storefronts is unfair. Stores pay a substantial rent to be there and a lot of money to renovate and pay people to put up stuff for you to look at. Anyone not looking at these store fronts are robbing people of their money. There should be traffic stops where people have to describe exactly the location, size and content of every ads on the street. Failing to do so should be punished by law.
Sssh. Don’t give them ideas.
Ads are a hostile takeover of my time. No one is entitled to my time.
Ads are code, executed on my device. No one is entitled to running code on any of my devices.
New mantra unlocked
So what if a site had terms of use so they can gain that right? Would you turn off your adblockers then?
No.
Edit: Fuck
yourthe deceiving walls of text (TOS).
Do you read every billboard on the road? After all they’ve paid for that patch of sky, what obligation do you have to glance that way without paying them the courtesy of processing their inane drivel. Ever see the same ad more than once? Me neither. Every time I see an ad, like a stupid, happy cow, I am entertained once again.
I have (no kidding) taken u-turns to see an interesting billboard. Anyway, the analogy is flawed: You still see the billboard, even if you don’t read all of it - just like I see the ad, but may not really read it.
You ever hear the term “born sucker”?
Ever hear of "Can’t read half a sentence without
no.
Well, now you have. I also tailgate or pass annoyingly slowly to be able to read bumper stickers.
Theft?
Methinks you don’t know the definition of the words you use.
Even if it is - fuck 'em. 99% of websites use invasive scripting to track us, and they’re clearly adversarial to us. Just read up on what Facebook has always done…think they’re the only ones?
Website owners had a chance in the late 90’s to treat users/consumers with respect, and chose to say “fuck you” instead, and since have doubled down on their attitude towards us.
Fine. You wanna play that way? I’ll teach everyone I know how to use ad blockers and tools like DNS filters. I’ll never buy something directly through your website, etc.
If you want to call ad blocking theft, then the delivery of ads is theft of my bandwidth, cpu time (electricity), and the invasive scripting/tracking is theft of my personal info.
How many boots do you lick in a day?
You use a service but deny it the remuneration it expects. If that does not meet your definition of theft, do you also think turnstile jumping is fair play?
It would be boot licking if Big Advertising or Big Content actually cared about my opinion. I have no illusion that they do.
Is boot licking made better or worse when the licked boots are apathetic?
You keep using that
wordphrase, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Jumping a turnstile is less theft than adblocking. That subway train is gonna run whether I’m there or not. On a site, you are more directly consuming their resources.
In any case, due to capitalism you can’t give companies an inch cuz they are required to abuse the shit out of it to squeeze out as much money as possible. It’s not enough to show an ad at the start of a YouTube video, now you have to have multiple unskippable ads at the start and also in the middle of it too. And that’s not enough either, now you gotta track people across websites, even if they aren’t logged in, to show more ads. And that’s not enough either, now you gotta sell user data because if you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table. It’s gross.
I don’t agree, but thanks for posting an actually unpopular opinion. Based on the voting, this sub should just get renamed to popularopinion and be done with it.
I think downvotes on truly unpopular opinions probably come from users who don’t notice which community the post is in.
That’s certainly a good explanation, but it really calls into question the viability of a sub like this. On reddit, the engaged folks drown it out and mostly keep the unpopular opinions intact. This and the super highly-upvoted political stuff just makes it look like this sub has no purpose at all.
Why? In Reddit you can’t reply if you get downvoted so there’s an incentive to flip upvoting and downvoting.
In Lemmy there’s no such mechanic so why flip them?
Because it’s the point of the sub as indicated by the name? Why would anyone want to post an unpopular opinion here after the votes and comments on this thread? And to be clear, this is insanely low stakes. I could not care any less if this becomes popular opinion sub #1000 that I can add to my block list. But…assuming we’re here in these comments because we like the idea of the sub, does it not make sense to embrace that and upvote the unpopular stuff? I’m also thinking through things like sorting by all time, which is ruined for this sub if the votes continue like this.
Does Lemmy have any sort of algorithm that puts more upvoted posts to the top and drown out downvoted posts? Or is it more based on replies?
I wholeheartedly disagree with you. I am so confused. Do I upvote or downvote?
Definitely up :)
Thanks
What about people who pay for their internet by data used, is the website not stealing from the user by wasting data with the unwatned ads?
I think I’d be ok with removing my ad blocker if ads were simple and non intrusive and creators actually got a decent chunk of the ad revenue. The reason I use it however is that most websites have proven that if you give them an inch they’ll take a mile. So many websites now have so many ads that the actual content is barely visible through the mid-page ads, auto play videos, popups and banners. And that’s not even mentioning the tracking and cookies they now request/use. The internet has become unusable without an ad blocker. If I want to support someone’s content I’d rather use whatever donation method they have set up.
Only in the same way you’re supporting the local economy by being pickpocketed. There are better and less shady ways of doing it.
I would love to support sites by viewing their ads, but I object to the behind-the-scenes data transactions that are associated with ads. maybe I’ll click, maybe not, but creating profiles of me that people sell is not acceptable.
It has been an unwritten agreement since forever (or at least as long as there have been ads on the web) that if you consume the content, you pay the creator by looking at the ads on their site.
Downvoted because this is objectively wrong.
I’ve been using the internet since the mid 90s, and there were very few ads then. The ads that did exist were mainly banner ads pointing to other sites, for example. Ad companies got wise to them and started posting their own ads, then started using invasive technology like popup ads and animated ads.
From the first time these types of ads were used, there have been complaints against them, and adblockers were developed.
At no point did I agree to view ads on the internet, and the vast majority of people only put up with them because they don’t know that there’s a way to get rid of them.
I’ve been on the web since my college installed Mosaic on their HP-UX machines. I wanna say summer of '94. Thus, I can honestly say that I’ve seen it before the first commercial banner ad was sold later that year. I actually thought ad were worse in the early 2000’s than they are now. Flash should never have been used for that, for example. My main problem with ads these days is that there are sites where the signal/noise ratio is just ridiculously bad. In those cases, I vote with my feet and stay away.
