>it'd be wrong to hire a dude to clip out all the ads

>hire

Well I'm not paying for my adblocker. What if this dude volunteers? What if I'm doing it for my family members? This isn't a hypothetical.

Here's a digital analogy for you. Suppose I:

1) Disable my ad blocker.

2) "Open Link in New Tab"

3) Wait for my browser to finish requesting that data from the server

4) Close the tab without ever looking at it.

Is that unethical? Is it unethical for me to decide I don't want to read a webpage after requesting it? Should the "open in new tab" feature always force a tab switch against my wishes, so ensure I'm not ripping off some website by requesting their data but not looking at their ads?

No, because you didn't enjoy the content either. Having the ads forced into your view is the cost of enjoying the content. So this is not a good analogy.

"Enjoy" is an interesting word to use there. That makes it akin to tipping, where if I read an article from the NY Times but don't think it was any good I don't have to see their ads.

I haven't seen anyone else make that argument, but I do enable ads on certain sites that I like so it's probably not wrong for a certain class of people.

If you're doing it for the sole purpose of wasting their money then it's pretty unethical. That's why in law they always talk about intent.

You've lost me on this analogy. Ad blocking is generally not used for the purpose of wasting a publisher's money.

When I was a kid, my dad used to rip the advertisements out of magazines as soon as they came in the mail. That's a practice I've carried on, despite getting far few magazines these days... My family also used to mute the advertisements on TV, though I don't think any of us still watch it.

So when I see people claiming that adblockers are immoral, it always gives me a good chuckle. Is ripping the ads out of a magazine immoral too? Is the mute button on my remote a ethnical crime against poor hapless television companies?

> Is the mute button on my remote a ethnical crime against poor hapless television companies?

Which reminds me, TV/cable/et al. related services already cost money, yet they still serve advertisements. Isn't this a form of double-dipping? Shouldn't they be paying (or giving a discount) to watch advertisements?

The cost of broadcast and cable networks already includes a discount that takes the advertising into account. Ad-free networks (HBO, Showtime, etc.) otherwise known as "pay television" are $15/mo each, since all revenue must come directly from subscribers.

Pay TV came to Australia in the 90s with the promise "No ads - your payment covers it". Then the ads came between shows. Then the ads came within shows, just like free-to-air TV. So... what were we paying for again?

> my dad used to rip the advertisements out of magazines

sheezus. didn't that take a shitload of time and effort? i can't believe how many ads magazines have. they're all over everything.

> didn't that take a shitload of time and effort?

Not really, back when I received the paper copy of the Economist it took me about a minute after receiving it on a Saturday morning to flip through and rip-out the double-sided ad pages. Also gave me an idea of the main stories in the issue.

Put a 30cm ruler on the page near the binding, grab top, pull. Well worth it for making the magazine thinner, easier to fold into my back pocket, and more readable on the bus. Just turn the page and continue reading, no interruptions.

One time there I remove so many pages ( 20? a lot anyway ) that I actually spent money on postage and sent them back to the Editor with the suggestion that he spend his time reading them for me and provide a summary.

Did you remove less than 50% of the paper? I guess the equivalent to online publishers' attempts to prevent ad-blocking would be simply to stop printing adverts on both sides of a page. Presumably, publishers had no incentive to do that because, as far as they were concerned, they still got paid for the adverts. And the number of people ripping ads out of magazines must be a tiny percentage, of course.

This I did as well when The Economist arrived. They make it easy since half of the ads are printed full-page on both sides. Took like 30 seconds to do and did make reading much more enjoyable. Now (wow, has been years now) I use the digital edition on iPad and listen to it more than I read it, but when reading I do look at the ads as there are fewer and of high quality in the app edition.

This big effort could serve as an indicator how experience damaging those ads were perceived to be.

If you create great costs (like ripping 30 pages from a magazine) for a small gain is this a particularly well intended economic strategy?

TTS is what I use. I picked up a used old kindle keyboard, one of the versions that still had the feature. I slip that into my jacket pocket when I go on walks. It's nice because you're not limited on selection. The robotic nature of the voice fades away after an hour or two of listening to it.

Unless you're an unskilled driver, driving becomes "automatic" in much the same way that riding a bike does. When you ride a bike, are you concentrating on not falling over? Maybe for the first week or so that you're learning...

That's a form of institutionalized hazing. Probably unethical, but I've seen behavioral science defenses of it.

>"It's unethical to shoot somebody"

It's unethical to pull on a little piece of metal?

Citation for suspicion? Is this a joke?

A reference to who is suspicious and why is deadly serious.

"Planet" refers to points of light that have complex motion in the night sky throughout the year. Earth is below the sky, therefore Earth cannot possibly be a planet. This is just common sense people.