Is it ethical to block ads while still consuming content?

Question

When browsing the web, many users block advertisements for a surprisingly wide variety of reasons. The site operator can send the user whatever they want, often a mix of the sought after content, good ads, and terrible, tasteless or harmful ads. Assuming that the user has full control over their browser, is it ethical for them to only accept the content that they personally find acceptable, even if it reduces the effectiveness of the content provider's business model?

When I ask "is it ethical", I mean whether it will result in the greatest good and least harm for the individuals involved in a particular instance, and for society as a whole as this becomes a more common behavior. This ethical system is Consequentialism, according to an editor (Thanks!).

Answer 1

I don't think we have any idea yet in the big picture. Is ad revenue the right way to support web sites? Are the costs of running web sites small enough so that they can be born as an incidental cost? Should your internet provider be charging more and then awarding some fraction of that to the sites you visit? Dunno. Society is complex; one could make some guesses using game theory, economics, and so on, but mostly we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out.

When it comes to an individual site, if advertisers get zero click-throughs they'll stop advertising there (or by some means the site will fail to earn money from having ads). Blocking ads is not necessarily any worse than letting them through but ignoring them. The bottom line is that usually merchandise needs to be sold, eventually, and if that never happens, careful advertisers will stop doing it. If your patronage is a substantial part of what is keeping a site afloat (very unlikely), then not being influenced by ads to detectably change your buying preferences is perhaps shooting yourself in the foot.

Otherwise, it's a classic case of the tragedy of the commons: there is a public good, it is supported by some, and you're not doing your part. You might also go do a potluck dinner and not bring anything; use roads and libraries and such and not pay taxes; cut down trees for your fireplace and not replant them (and not own the land they grow on); or any number of other things where you consume a resource that you and others rely upon without replenishing that resource in any way. Most ethical systems frown upon this, though the depth of sanction depends on the details. It's a clear violation of the Categorical Imperative, for example, and you wouldn't make this a rule in rule-based utilitarianism since everyone would probably end up worse off if everyone followed that rule. A few systems have genuine trouble with tragedy of the commons; ordinary utilitarianism is one of these, as it has no mechanism by which individuals can recognize collective harm and avoid it (e.g. it's better for me to not read ads, but if nobody reads ads and there's no web site, we're all worse off than we would be if we had the site and read ads).

In summary: this is typically not considered moral behavior, but as the harm is miniscule, the degree of sanction is, in most systems, quite mild. ("Tsk tsk!") There may be no sanction at all if e.g. you are not the intended audience so the ads don't really apply to you, but the incidental cost of you increasing network traffic a little is so miniscule as to be irrelevant. (Basically all utilitarian systems would say, "Oh, no worries then," while you'd still be on the wrong side of the Categorical Imperative unless you could very carefully craft your general maxim; rules-lawyering maxims is generally not considered to be good form e.g. because you're likely to suffer from bias due to self-interest.)

Answer 2

The first problem is that there is no good comparison to the real world. The closest is sitting in a bookstore and reading the content then leaving without buying. But for multiple reasons this is not a perfect analogy.

The way the ads work matters as well. Depending on the site, the ads need to be viewed, the page needs to be viewed, or the ad needs to be clicked on.

So the "cost" of consuming the content can be viewed as either being forced to observe the ad, or a probability cost of you clicking on it.

It's not quite unethical in comparison to non-digital examples, but it isn't a "nice" thing to do towards the content creators.

So in terms of dollars, you would most likely need to click on ads to reward the content creator. But since ads are a major source of malware this is not always a good idea. Here you can also argue that since the ads may be malicious you are not obligated to click on them.

This issue is also similar to piracy, in that one must consider the "potential" price vs actual price given a marginal cost of zero due to digital products.

I use adblock-plus, ghostery, noscript, and a VPN myself.

Answer 3

If users saw and clicked on ads, but never bought anything, then it would be the merchants who paid the advertiser suffering, instead of the content provider. The merchant would have to start looking for other ways to promote awareness of, and desire for, their product. The advertiser would start to become obsolete, and the "ad supported content" business model would deteriorate. I propose that this business model is doomed to the tragedy of the commons, and that society must evolve past it or protect it with force. There are alternatives, some more likely than others to succeed.

I would love to have more live interaction with the content providers, and would certainly be willing to pay for it with money, time, and labour. Debates, concerts, group art / cooking / hacking sessions, instruction and training in small classes, participatory filmmaking à la Jackass, interaction with architects before building my own home, the list is endless. Many of these activities could produce trivially replicated works of art, and I would give them away for free just to be cool and to make my society more vibrant, fun and useful for all of us.

This raises a concern for the welfare of the advertisers themselves, who the users are basically cutting out of the loop. I have a friend in advertising, living hand to mouth, so this is a personal concern for me as an individual, because the welfare of my peers affects the power of my social network to help me as an individual member; the same reasoning applies to a lesser extent to my society as a whole. Perhaps the advertisers need to see themselves as artists, and focus on working within this same framework to produce desirable art that promotes (or disparages) the products they would have advertised (or helped us ignore). Comedy, debates, and live reviews with Q&A sessions are all things that I could see a talented advertiser doing.

I am starting to see a pattern here: There is too much "one to world" interaction in our society, and not enough one to one or "one to group". Altering this imbalance will cost the consumer more than just downloading or 3D printing everything for free, but this could be OK as more live art in a capitalist society should prevent it's cost from becoming unreasonable. Canucks tickets, anyone?

Answer 4

When browsing the web, many users block advertisements for a surprisingly wide variety of reasons. The site operator can send the user whatever they want, often a mix of the sought after content, good ads, and terrible, tasteless or harmful ads. Assuming that the user has full control over their browser, is it ethical for them to only accept the content that they personally find acceptable, even if it reduces the effectiveness of the content provider's business model?

Yes. If I ran a website, I am making my content available to you. There's zero legal binding agreement that says I have to do this or do that. Your device = your rules.

The deal breaker with ad blockers is actually when I was back in 4th grade, in late 2008 I clicked on one of those big green "Start Now" fake download ads, and I almost had to completely reinstall Windows because it infected my computer with a fake antivirus software called Security Shield. Ads are an extreme security vulnerability and they get blocked with zero whitelists.

And some history: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], TL;DR - Forbes were harassing users into turning off their ad blockers, then they serve drive-by downloads because one of the infinitely many advertisers they use got hacked.

When I ask "is it ethical", I mean whether it will result in the greatest good and least harm for the individuals involved in a particular instance, and for society as a whole as this becomes a more common behavior. This ethical system is Consequentialism, according to an editor (Thanks!).