No compact exists. Society has not created it. Social compacts are created and codified by society.
No compact is implicit in consumption of content.
Malware is a very real threat, not a “slight inconvenience”.
There is no compact.
No compact exists. You keep insisting it does, but provide no evidence of its existence.
Again, their faulty business model is their problem.
The compact does exist between millions of people and it is the essence of the website. It is just as real as the compact that exists among millions of bus riders. You are not the judge of whether society has created a compact or not.
Prove it
And you are? What qualifications do you have that I lack?
This is funny, because I’ve felt for a long time that online ads broke the compact first.
When ads started blaring sound unexpectedly, I felt like they broke the compact.
When ads started covering the actual content and, by poor design or mishap, were impossible to move rendering the content inaccessible, I felt like they broke the compact.
When malware started creeping in through the ads - and don’t be a damn fool and pretend that’s not a problem even on legitimate sites - I felt like they broke the compact.
When articles started to be broken down into dozens of paragraph-long pages so they could collect more page views without providing more content, I felt like they broke the compact.
When the poor coding of ads crashed my browser, I felt like they broke the compact.
When they disguised ads as content to trick people into clicking them, I felt like they broke the compact.
In a myriad of obnoxious, selfish, greedy, and aggressive ways, they broke the compact. Don’t lecture me for refusing to be taken advantage of any longer. Your beef is with the people who made the ads abuse their audience until they drove them away.
Exactly so^^^
The ads authors expect and intend that ads flash, move, jitter, and play sound.
I don’t want any of that on a web page.
Also not wanted, popups with tricksy close buttons.
Or popunders of any sort.
Then don’t use their website!
I like my analogy of it being similar to riding a bus, so I’ll bring that up again. It’s impossible to prove that this compact among bus riders exists, because it consists of brain waves and thousands of tiny interactions. Yet, it very obviously exist, as anyone who has exchanged pleasant courtesies with other bus riders can attest.
And, as I said above, it is implicit in using the bus. Even if you’re from rural Nebraska and you’ve never used a bus before, you’re bound by the compact to use courtesy on the bus. You are enjoying the benefits of the bus, so you must make little sacrifices - giving up your seat to a pregnant woman, turning down the music on your Ipod, not talking loud on your cell phone - to keep the experience you are benefiting from bearable for everyone else.
It’s the same when you make use of a website dependent on ad revenue. Because you are benefiting from it, you have a duty both to its creators and its other users to allow the ads to appear on your screen so that the website can continue benefiting everyone. It’s a social obligation.
Exactly the point.
That courtesy includes not shouting at the other passengers, or flashing lights in their eyes.
Or crashing the bus. Or taking up several seats at once, or moving from seat to seat.
If I did those things on a bus, I’d be blocked from using the bus.
Would you mind giving me a rundown of what websites you use, where the ads are so horribly obnoxious? Or have you been using adblock so long that you’re out of touch with what they’re like?
Here’s a list of the websites I use on the daily basis that have ads:
New York Times
Onion
Onion AV Club
Straight Dope
Facebook
Google
Youtube
Couple other newspaper websites
None of these websites have ads that start screaming at me out of the blue or use flashing lights. They are all mute on default and you have to hit the sound button for the sound to come on. Youtube, obviously, has ads with sounds, but they’re before videos with sound anyway so they aren’t unexpected.
The Onion and the Onion AV Club usually have an ad that takes over the entire screen soon after the page loads, which, I admit, is jarring. But I put up with it because I know it’s the small price I pay for enjoying their content day after day for several years.
The only websites I’ve encountered where ads are really obnoxious are those on the seedier side of the internet - some weather websites, image hosting websites, free dictionaries, song lyrics, etc.
If that were true, then those sites would completely prohibit me from viewing their content if I had adblock on. Blip is perfectly capable of setting the timer on their “Please turn off adblock” splash screen from 90 seconds up to 999999999999999999999 seconds. The fact that they don’t do this proves that they realize forcing people to watch ads in exchange for content isn’t viable.
Viability isn’t related to morality.
Yes, the website’s operators probably realize that banning adblock users from their content isn’t viable. They’re worried that the users would then gravitate toward other websites and be lost forever. That doesn’t mean that they don’t expect viewers to use adblock, and think the people using adblock aren’t doing something wrong.
My statement - that web content creators “expect - or, in other words, consider reasonable, courteous, reciprocal, etc.” for viewers to look at ads, is incontrovertibly true, and this is coming from someone within the industry.
Go back and read Eliahna’s post above (#164), and then ask why any of us should CARE what web content creators expect us to do. They broke their own business model all by themselves, and now they are whining about it. Tough. Maybe if they hadn’t let advertisers shit all over their readership for so long, people wouldn’t have turned to adblockers.
Go back and read my dozens of posts in this thread about the compact that exists between content creators and their readers and how by making use of the website this compact is implicit. You should care because by breaking this compact you are showing a lack of character in the same way you are when you eat a messy sandwich or have a loud cellphone conversation on the bus. You are breaking an exchange of courtesy that exists for the benefit of our community, freeing yourself of the burden while increasing it for everyone else.
“Shit all over their readership.” Give me a break. Like I said in my post above, ads on decent websites aren’t that burdensome. The best way to avoid obnoxious ads is to browse the internet in an intelligent way.
Like with ad blocking software running.
Whether it is “immoral” probably won’t matter much. The issue is how quality content is going to be paid for. Yes, Joe Dweeb can throw together a web page in his basement just for the fun of it, but why should an organization bother putting together a web page containing reliable, researched information if they aren’t going to derive financial benefit from doing so? The people creating the page probably like to eat.
If adblocking becomes popular with the majority of users, something will happen whether you approve of it or not. Either robust paywalls will be developed (i.e. not circumventable just by playing with cookies), methods will be developed to block adblockers (not very common yet, but as has been mentioned it is being tried), or lots of companies will go out of business or find other means of providing paid information content. Companies are not going to give you information out of the goodness of their hearts.
Dude, if I was FLASHING PEOPLE on the bus, I’d be blocked from the bus.
Look at this page:
Things move around, change color, pop out at you.
And then look at this page:
Calm, polite, well behaved
Perhaps you’re right and I should just avoid the Denver Post.
And then perhaps everybody else will do the same thing.
At that point, their ad-based model dies without any adblocking at all.
OTOH, maybe an blocked ad leaves a text note that catches my eye as I read the page.
At any rate, this implied compact you keep talking about is imaginary.
People post content, people view content. People filter content in many ways.
I am willing (and DO) pay for online content. How is that showing a lack of character?
It was an ad on a reputable website which infected my work PC with malware. Never again. Reputable content producers don’t damage their visitors’ machines.
With money, as it always has been. I suspect content producers will set up a subscription service or “pay-per-view” setup, which will allow users to access that quality content for a reasonable fee. It’s hardly an insoluble problem.
To sum up, you can’t prove the compact you keep talking about and whose terms you claim to know, exists at all.
This is true, and nearly all newspapers have done this in the past year. The newspaper I work at just implemented a partial paywall. Still doesn’t mean it’s right to block ads, though.