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Saying that using an adblocker is immoral is no different than saying that it is immoral to switch the TV channel in a commercial break (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by ThreeHopsAhead@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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just that the TV commercial looks back at you through the TV and the TV follows you around everywhere, wherever you go, whatever you do, taking note of everything to get to know every single detail about you, every interest, every prejudice, every weakness of yours, to get to know you like no person, no matter how close to you does, like not even yourself do to use that information to influence you most effectively to the TV channel's and the advertiser's advantage, to manipulate you, to sell this information about you to other companies like insurances who use the power that this knowledge provides over you to extract every last cent of money from you, to sell you.

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[-] madcaesar@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You know what's immoral? Advertising medicine. Advertising surgery breakfast foods to kids. Advertising garbage fast food to kids.

That's immoral, not adblockers.

[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I love a big bowl of surgery for breakfast

[-] nachobel@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Mm delicious triple bypass

[-] Blizzard@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago

You know what's immoral? Advertising

Just this would do.

[-] Merulox@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

It seems I’m stupid because I don’t understand what you imply when you say advertising medicine is immoral

[-] Rumblestiltskin@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

Because people shouldn't be convinced to take a medicine based on good marketing. They should get advice from a good source like a doctor.

[-] Merulox@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Ohh, right, I see, thank you

[-] madcaesar@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

It's illegal in Europe for example. Because it's big pharma basically pushing unnecessary drugs on people.

[-] Thagthebarbarian@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

A reminder that this war isn't new, even before the mass consolidation of TV stations, they got together to standardize commercial break timing so it didn't matter if you changed the channel because you were just switching to commercials on another channel

[-] TheOneWithTheHair@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Considering that everyone can be targeted by "bad actors" ... by even ads on search engines (see https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/-nitrogen-ransomware-effort-lures-it-pros-via-google-bing-ads ) adblockers are as immoral as a knight wearing armor because it's an "unfair advantage". Sorry, but no one I know wants ransomware installed on their computers.

[+] mikeyBoy14@lemmy.world -6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't think that's quite right. The act of changing the channel wouldn't have impacted the station's ad revenue because the tech couldn't tell if the ad was served. On YouTube you actually deprive the site of ad revenue with an ad blocker. And if enough people do it, you could also deprive creators of material earnings.

[-] Infinitenonblondes@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

So fucking what?

[-] mikeyBoy14@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

So it's not the best analogy.

[-] owenfromcanada@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Well, historically ad revenue for TV is based on viewership, right? I'm not 100% sure how that was calculated before streaming, but I would think that changing the channel would still affect those numbers, albeit in a more gradual way. It would still have a similar effect, just not as immediate.

It's important to differentiate "immoral" from "consequences." The consequences of adblockers/changing the channel is that it may impact content creators, but that doesn't make it immoral.

[-] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

The Nielsen company doing surveys of a percentage of households is how they know. Nowadays they even have a tracker you wear that reports back to Nielsen what you’ve been watching/listening to based on what it can hear, in the old days it was a form folks filled out saying what they watched or listened to

[-] collegefurtrader@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

It was calculated by a sample of households with a tracker box

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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2023

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