> The hard thing for platforms is that no one trusts the platform to not lie about delivery metrics. Thus the need for advertisers to run code to verify it ran and run alternative networks.

None of that is my problem as a user though. I'm not obligated to expose myself to malware so that Coca-Cola can accurately track how many people saw their ad.

You're not obligated. You don't have to use the service, or you can pay for the ad-free version.

Within current legal standards you are. Ideally the government is supposed to step in and regulate situations like these to remove bad actors and provide consumer protections, since in a monopoly/oligopoly consumers can be forced to go without a service to comply with onerous conditions for that service and the music industry loves their monopolies.

A website is currently absolutely within their rights to decline you service if you refuse to be tracked by Coca-Cola's spyware ridden malware. This is a consequence of living in a society dominated by false cries to adhere to incorrectly stated libertarian ideals - regulation isn't all bad, though anti-competitive regulation tends to be bad (there is a grey area with incidentally introducing barriers to market entries to fulfill a social need... like everything - it's complicated).

This is what is frustrating. I will agree that users are subject to civil law, but that is not a moral claim. I am seeing so many people on HN taking a strong, rebuking moral stance on a civil matter. They hand wave the morality of Spotify allowing RCE by third-parties but feel indignant for a person breaking a fucking TOS or EULA.

> They hand wave the morality of Spotify allowing RCE by third-parties but feel indignant for a person breaking a fucking TOS or EULA.

If Spotify wants to suspend accounts for using adblockers, fine. I don't actually object. But I'm seriously disturbed by the number of comments here which equate using adblocked Spotify with 'stealing music' or otherwise imply that ToS violations are criminal acts. This sort of framing, by people who ought to know better, is why tech companies are still showing up in court pretending ToS violations are felonies under the CFAA. (And, thankfully, getting slapped down by increasingly-annoyed judges who understand the distinction.)

Creating a new copy of something is not the same as stealing the original, blocking ads is not the same as obtaining unauthorized access, security precautions aren't interchangeable with other approaches to adblocking, and violating a EULA is a civil matter.

Also frustrating is being hit by a wave of down votes for even tangentially mentioning libretarianism in a negative light, there is a lot of appeal to libretarianism similar to socialism, and every other governmental or economic approach, refusing to discuss the pros and cons just further cements the partisan divide.

Just to be clear, libretarianism is not incompatible with regulation - I happen to think that a certain amount of regulation and government oversight is required to allow things to function, I am an optimist about human behavior, but the ideal anarchist world with no laws is absolutely unsustainable, IMO. So my barb (and it wasn't even a sharp one) was more about the false painting of libretarianism being incompatible with government regulation and the talking points that ensue, then any desire to allow a focus on individual freedoms.

For whatever it's worth, I think there's a difference between mentioning libertarianism in a negative light and holding it responsible for society's ills. I think libertarianism is worth debating, and the political Libertarianism practiced in America is often ridiculous and utterly biased against individuals. But I don't think that being refused access to a service if you reject risky and unethical advertising practices is a consequence of misinterpreted libertarian theory.

The highest-profile appeals to corporate interests are made by politicians who don't claim libertarian ideal. The ability to cut consumers off from non-essential, non-monopoly services for terms violations is standard throughout countries without any libertarian tradition, so the exotic element in the US is the legal protection for spyware creators and malware distributors, neither of which stem from libertarian theory. The spyware aspect is about the lack of a direct constitutional privacy protection, and the conservative/literalist readings which have steadily eroded the penumbra reasoning. The malware aspect is the result of repeated failures to hold companies responsible for allowing data breaches or serving exploits, which owes more to special interests pandering and gross technical ignorance among legislators than to even a pretense of libertarianism.

You're right to say that cutting off service access is legal, and you're right to say that the most influential form of libertarianism in the US is twisted and often counterproductive. But I suspect I'm not alone in finding the attribution of any business-related badness to libertarianism tiring and a bad basis for a productive conversation.

I agree, yes. Maybe it's a sort of corporate motive that takes hold in each of our countries and in the US it's become infective within the libretarian section. I could just as easily see a twisting of a socialist angled view being twisted in the same way, "Our advertising supports our service in a necessary manner and it'd be unconscionable to deprive any resident the access to our service."

As an aside, isn't it amusing that getting an American education one of the skills that seems to be valued above others is the ability to twist words to whatever B.S. you need them to mean at the time, it's like everyone in the US is an expert marketer and political fixer/spin-man.

I think you're dead-on about that corporate motive.

The US is incredibly thin on socialism, even nominal socialism, and we already see traces of this when public-interest arguments become convenient. The Net Neutrality fight is a hideously good example; once ISPs decided their monopolies were too blatant to use free market rationales, they went out and astroturfed a narrative where cheap and fair internet was an attack on minorities and the poor.

And yes, I can't deny that US libertarianism (the party and a lot of the individual voices) is weirdly pervaded by a willingness to abandon libertarian principles in deference to corporations. It wasn't that long ago that you could find conservatives complaining about excessive "civil libertarianism" in calls for social progress. Today, it's horribly easy to find people arguing that Wells Fargo should be allowed to stretch their forced arbitration clause to cover outright fraud, because apparently the bank's rights are the only ones which we need to protect.

Spotify's customers could get some anonymous Spotify accounts and verify they are getting the expected number of ads? Or pay someone to do that for them.

That's what the ad networks do, and why advertisers accept their numbers. They've been measuring advertising impact for decades and have clear processes that generally include transparency and 3rd party auditing.

Of course, radio was paid for by ads as well.

Metallica doesn’t get a dime when their records played all night on college FM. The local hardware store on the radio ad also doesnt know anything about the personal lives of who might have heard their ad.

It is a different landscape now than just buying a primetime slot, advertising is much much more about gleaming any piece of potentially useful personal information about a user for an advertisers own furure use or for sale to the highest bidder. And personally identifiable information held by third parties will never be secure as it is a challenge and a prize for talented people to steal.

Indeed. And notably, the radio stations paid the composers of the songs.