The bottom line is that my security is more important than your ad revenue. On this issue, there can be no debate.

The fact that viewing the vast majority of ads involves running completely unaudited, often heavily obfuscated JavaScript, written, published and served by companies who don't give the slightest of shits about (or in some cases, actively seek to harm) the security of the people who view them, makes them a complete non-starter for me.

Any ‘immorality’ involved in blocking ads doesn't even begin to compare to that of the ad industry's disregard for security (let alone privacy).

What about the media? I know hating them is kinda in fashion, but do you think the world will be a better place without NYT / WSJ /Guardian?

I haven't had any security issues it 10+ years, often without ad blocking. And I'm more afraid of an internet that is only Facebook, Amazon and Breitbart and what it will do to the civil society.

Considering the NYT / WSJ / Guardian have shown themselves to be senseless immoral propaganda outlets/unofficial PR firms for the highest bidder, I will absolutely and unshakingly shed no tears.

Every single media outlet can be burned to the ground for all I care, there will always be a new one to readily and eagerly take its place.

Find me a media outlet that actually has moral standards and I will happily concede, but before that I will sleep soundly at night knowing that ad-blocking is the best way to defeat propaganda as well as protecting myself from malware.

> What is your take on the morality / consequences of ad-blocking?

Since I block ads, I don't get any viruses on my computer anymore. And no I do not visit porn sites. Many prominent websites have served malware to users in the past.

Second, my laptop battery lasts way longer since there is less Javascript to serve. Pages display faster and most auto-play video don't even show up anymore.

> What's the alternative most feel comfortable with? Google contributor? Patreon? Something that I'm not aware of?

How about publishers serve ads from their own main domain ? I'm sure they'll be more careful what kind of bullshit is actually loaded , since there is no cross origin policy protection for them. And since they'll have to pay for the bandwidth, they'll also ask for lighter ads from networks. Ad networks can also offer campaigns that are not driven by pay per click or impression , but renting space on websites for a limited period of time at a fixed price.

> How about publishers serve ads from their own main domain ? ...

Yeah, I'm a big fan of the idea. Imagine this - what if advertisers would give you a small PHP script to include in the website source code, that would run random code on the server, instead of ga.js? Would they think twice before including that crap? I bet they would.

As it stands, I've encountered sites that wanted me to run even 10 different scripts on a page, for ad networks I haven't even heard about.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but this would make it virtually impossible for the ad provider to reliably measure how often their ads are viewed, forcing them to consider only clicks in their business model.

This may be a pro or a con, I'm not sure. Would optimising for ad-clicks instead of ad-views encourage more valuable and interesting ads, that one would actually want to know more about? Or would it encourage (literal) big mouse clickbait at the expense of understated, informative, Google Analytics-style text ads?

Ads are not the only nor, afaik, even the most common vector for malware. If your computer can get hacked by you just visiting a webpage, you need to fix that regardless of whether you block ads. It's a huge security problem

If you don't want to get hacked by visiting a website, use cURL (actually, I think it had a few security bugs, so...)

The difference is that websites have rep, and google polices sites with malware protection (which firefox uses too, btw).

What about ads?

This reminds me of the argument that you should run SSH on an non-standard port. Sure, can't hurt. I'm sure it does stop many indiscriminate drive-by attacks. But it's hardly a real security solution. If your SSH server is so weak that it could fall to a drive-by attack then you have much bigger problems.

(And, FWIW, Google's malware blocking applies equally to ads as it does sites you type into the address bar)

Reputation doesn't work well enough because of ads. I think that's the gist of the complaint here.

Ads means otherwise reputable websites serve malware. Even when the ads themselves are trustworthy, they very often do not have acceptable security practices, preventing interception.

Publishers get to try sending whatever they want to my computer. I get to accept or reject the parts that I want. Based on whether I accept or reject ads, they can refuse to let me see content.

This is business, not morality. I have no moral obligation to support their business model. They have no moral obligation to deliver a website without intrusive advertising. (Okay, maybe they have a moral obligation not to invade my privacy by tracking me all over the internet, which is why when it comes down to it, adblocking is probably more moral than putting ads on your website).

Just because you have the /power/ to block their ads has nothing to do with the morality.

More intersting though::: Don't you think it is in your interest for these publishers to survive? It sometimes seems as if people are spending hours and hours reading these publications but have nothing but scorn for them, cheering their demise.

>Just because you have the /power/ to block their ads has nothing to do with the morality.

Sure, but one should probably have to start with making the argument for there being a moral burden incurred when sending a digital message to another persons computer that says "what have you got sitting there?" that requires the person to then execute everything they receive.

>Don't you think it is in your interest for these publishers to survive? It sometimes seems as if people are spending hours and hours reading these publications but have nothing but scorn for them, cheering their demise.

I don't think you necessarily need to be cheering to be fine with their demise. As for their heavy use? It's effectively dead time. I might read a lot of crap on the internet but if not that I'd be watching some tv show I don't really care about or doing a crossword or watching a bug on a wall. It's not high value entertainment it's something to do to make doing nothing slightly less boring.

I'm interested why you think this is a moral question. I don't have a moral responsibility to accept internet ads any more than I have to avoid changing the TV channel during an ad break, or to read instead of flipping past the ads in a free community newspaper. All three mediums use a business model based on the understanding that only some fraction of users will pay attention to the ads.

How about we let all the useless noise die? I mean the sites here, not the ads.

I have fond memories of the 'old' internet, where web sites existed because someone cared, not because someone wanted to sell ad space. Maybe I have selective memory, though.

Yeah, I have fond memories of that era, and of pulling postcardware down from BBS's.

Search was pretty awful, so I guess I'm glad ads funded Google.

The "Cool Site of the Day" archives give a good idea of what was online back then:

http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com/cgi-bin/stillcool.pl?month=0...

The oldest active site plugged by "Cool Site of the Day" is "The Froggy Page."

http://www.frogsonice.com/froggy/

The only other one from Aug '94 that seems pretty close to original was a site dedicated to documenting thoughts of festival-goers at Woodstock '94:

http://www.well.com/woodstock/

Hrm, maybe we are a little better off... but there is some charm in pages from that era. Even though it's not conventional modern design, it's like outsider art. You can see people's passion, just doing what they care about.

I remember popups, punch-the-monkeys, and junk on the internet long ago. Things have become more pervasive, but I think our use has also dramatically gone up.

Google contributor is close to the right model but replacing real ads with "Thank you" ads is a deal breaker. I want that screen real estate back!

Isn't the presumption by the content creator that that space will be filled with ads? I can see for in-stream advertisements just eliminating them, but side-bar ads or other banner ads being fully eliminated might result in poor layouts.

Most ad blockers completely remove the elements, will little ill-effect.

It does eliminate ads entirely when it can know with certainty it won't change the page layout.

I see it most with ads in paragraph breaks.

It's my computer and my browser, it renders pages the way I want it to.

Ads are pollution, IRL and online. I will block them and ignore them as much as I wish to.

I would be happy to set a header in my http requests, telling the site "Will not render" anything I consider to be advertising. But the moment you send me the content, it's fair game to display however I wish.

I am still undecided about things like Patreon.

Ads provide literally no value to me. If you can't figure out a business model which serves both you and your users then I'm sorry, but I'm not going to put up with your pop-ups and annoying gifs.

They provide the business model for the text between the ads. That must be of some value at least.

I realize that, but the problem is that I'm assaulted so often that "block by default" is the only reasonable option. I whitelist a few sites that I go to often, but that's it.

My opinion - people don't have a RIGHT to a business model. Internet is a free for all, so if someone clicks ad links that is good for for adplatform, if not - sorry, invent something else. You can block me from visiting (in fact it is a common practice of segregation upon IP/regional/adblocker factors) and I can block you from visiting or executing some code on my PC (e.g. ad scripts).

It is similar to people saying that just by owning a car they are entitled for a parking space for it.

Also adplatforms seem to underestimate amount of stuff in the modern Internet and overestimate their own importance - I've switched dozens of tech sites in the last 5-10 years, I don't even remember names of some of them, so even if there will be a mass extinction event for internet media there'll still be lots of stuff to read or watch. Also - ad model obviously does not guarantee quality of material, as we all see on almost all websites.

I started using flashblock, which I thought was a reasonable compromise. It stopped the most aggressive as content and provided easy manual interaction to enable it.

Then websites started blocking me with ad-blocker-blockers. This occurred in tandem woth finding normal browsing getting slower and slower. This offended me that I switched to uBlock.

Its impossible to talk about the morality of online advertisement without first acknowledging how its unique compared to all other from of advertisement: it do not respect local advertisement laws. No publisher want to take responsibility for the advertisement they publish, especially if they happen to auction out space to criminals who distribute malware.

Advertisement is where spam was 20 years ago, and no amount of moral discussions can stop people from using spam filters. If the requirement to use gmail was that you had to turn off the spam filter and deal with all the scams, malware and crap every day, people would stop using gmail. For now people aren't forced into that choice, so people either just ignore the advertisements or filter it.

Online ads are unique in some ways, but emphasizing their uniqueness might not be the most effective way to have a society-wide conversation about them.

If I picked up a free, ad-supported newspaper from some booth on the street (pretty common where I live), and set up a Raspberry Pi with robotic arms and permanent markers to black out all the ads from my copy, would the publisher have any right to complain? Not any more, I think, than if I had wiped my ass with that paper. As soon as that copy enters my possession, I have every right to rip it apart as I see fit.

Replace "some booth on the street" with "some website" and "Raspberry Pi with robotic arms and permanent markers" with "browser plugin". This should not change anything about the moral and/or legal conclusion.

Now assume that some of the ads on the free paper were printed with toxic ink (malware) that stinks up my living room (computer), or were embedded with tiny chips to track when and where I read which story. Few people in real life would tolerate such ads, but for some reason we are constantly being told that we should allow them online.

I think we really need to emphasize these offline analogies. They are among the strongest arguments that could convince non-technical judges and juries to come up with reasonable rules for acceptable ads.

Brave has a relatively novel approach to this dilemma (https://blog.brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/).

"Users simply need to turn on Brave Payments from within Brave’s preferences page, then fund their Brave wallet (either with Coinbase, or by using Bitcoin they already have), and then browse as usual. While everything is automatic, once enabled, the Brave Payments UI allows you to control which sites receive your support by manually enabling or disabling funding for any of the sites you visit."

As a business that depends on ads we just have to write custom stuff to detect the blockers and ask them to turn it off. Those with resources will get around it, those who don't will have their stuff blocked.

Be careful with that attitude. The "blocker blockers" were something that convinced me to switch from flashblock (which is ad agnostic and quite minimalist) to uBlock.

Morality: I realize I want the content and it's paid for by ads. Viewing the content and not the ads might be seen as not fulfilling my end of that silent agreement. I realize it's not my decision how the site is financed, and I don't pay the bills or worry about click fraud or conversion rate issues with dumb non-tracking ads, but that's not my problem, neither legally or morally.

> What's the alternative most feel comfortable with? Google contributor? Patreon? Something that I'm not aware of?

I feel comfortable with dumb (non-tracking, non-targeted, non-animated) ads. I could go as far as allowing third party ads from a whitelisted ad network with a VERY strong integrity policy (uses ADSafe, states explicitly what limited information is given to advertisers, what information is used for targeting etc.).

If a site can't work without using dubious ad networks then by all means just kill the site. I'm choosing how to consume your site and I have moral quandries about helping kill ANY site that uses todays "normal" ad networks to finance their operation.

I don't CARE whether sites can prevent fraudulent clicks. I don't CARE whether the advertisers can actually be charged per impression or even get stats from their advertising.

I wouldn't lose any sleep if 90% of the content on the internet just disappeared tomorrow because all the browser vendors suddenly added on-by-default watertight ad blocking.

Is it immoral for you to change the channel or hit the mute button during television commercials?

I wish they weren't necessary. In an ideal world, advertisers would work to present me with relevant ads that aren't intrusive. How else will I learn about new products and services? But I can't take a chance on getting infected with malware, and the current practices are far too intrusive (which of 3 floating Javascript floating windows do I have to close first to read the content I came for, as they fight to be top-most?)

Patreon, premium subscriptions, a bitcoin adress you take donations on or just selling the content. All of these are fine.

There are no moral or ethical concern with ad-blocking. And even if there were, they pale in comparisson to the despicable practice of advertising itself, even if you managed to fix malware and scams.

Under the current system, ads are a vector for surveillance, annoyance, and malware, so I block them with no regrets, and help my less nerdy friends do the same. I have no problem with non-annoying and non-tracking ads, like the ones you find in printed magazines and newspapers. I also have no problem with subscriptions. I would only pay for a few, and plenty of sites would probably go out of business if they moved to a subscription model, but that's fine by me. There are too many sites dedicated to pumping out garbage to fill the holes between the ads, instead of writing things that people are willing to pay to read.

If I surf without adblock, lots of sites becomes unusable because of all the extra crap added to the site weight.

If I surf with adblock, lots of sites will die because of lack of funding.

Loss-Loss situation.

Even if 99% of sites will die there will be millions of them left and billions filling the empty niche. Out of them millions will invent some new and hopefully working business models.

Most aren't looking for an alternative. Why would they?

I'd like the price of all the products I buy reduced by the advertising expenses and then spend this additional money to pay for content directly cutting out the middle man. Ideally the money would go to a pool and be distributed from there according to the content I consume so that I am spared the hassle of signing up for a hundred services.

What is the alternative, better solution to user tracking then?

How about the morality of attention theft? Or dirty tricks?

Yes, of course not everyone is bad but one is enough.