Comment by tgv
12 hours ago
I don't see how ad-blocking is unethical.
There are companies that make money by placing ("out of home") ads in the public space. Not looking at those would then also be unethical? Priests sermoning on "thou shalt not hide thy eyes from the fancy displays in the bus stop"? An ad-police, the Conscious Ethical Viewing Effort Force Edict? That's some low-key dystopian thought.
It would be like attending a time-share dinner and putting in earplugs during their speech. I definitely think it's permissible to do it, but it's also permissible for them to kick you out for doing it.
It's more like tearing out the ad pages of a magazine before reading it. Even if the magazine has fine print saying "the reader may not tear out the ad pages..." It's still a ridiculous rule and it isn't wrong for people to ignore it.
The right analogy would be a newspaper delivering you the paper in ~milliseconds when you ask for it, whereever in the world, for free, and then you proceed to rip off the ads and read it.
The reason newspaper do the delivery was the promise that you'll see the ads, and they get to make money from that ads.
If they notice that you do all of the work of providing you the newspaper almost instantly and you dont see the ads, they are either gonna have to a) politely refuse to serve you b) point you to an alternate way of accessing the newspaper ("Newspaper Premium" for $$)
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