There's a level of annoyingness I'll tolerate from ads; small text ads or images are fine, autoplaying sound or anything that slows down my computer when I load the page is not.

Thanks for replying. While reading your reply, I noticed you didn't answer the questions. How come?

The implicit answer was probably along the lines of "I don't block ads on Google and such, because those ads are tolerable. I know Google has tolerable ads, and so I willingly allow those ads to display, and use Google and such".

I'm not them though, so I'm not certain.

If you had tried a bit harder, I think you could probably have determined what answers they intended for the questions you asked.

Well, not whether they used specific sites, because that was probably irrelevant to what you wanted to know/the point you were making.

But for the actual point of your question, you could have probably determined how they intended what they said to correspond to your questions.

I mean, obviously it's difficult to do that when talking to someone one disagrees with (sometimes it will take me a number of paragraphs of my response until I figure out a way to interpret what was said in a way that makes significantly more sense than the first interpretation I noticed). So, it's certainly understandable to not realize a more reasonable interpretation. But at the same time, it's I think generally better to look for one, to see if one can find one.

I discerned what he was saying, no problem. "I use services which I know are relying on ads and i block them anyway, violating their ToS, but let me bullshit a bit about 'i dont know if the link contains ads' and when I get called out, I will just deflect and play dumb."

I just wanted him to say it himself to see if he can understand how flawed his justification is. Watching him weasel out is just for fun.

I'm right here, you know?

Maybe I'm violating ToS. Never said I wasn't. You said "Stop using websites which rely on advertising. Simple enough." It isn't, unless you only visit a dozen sites and ignore links on them. Installing an ad-blocker is much simpler.

>It isn't, unless you only visit a dozen sites and ignore links on them.

Why do you feel entitled to use all the sites? They are not there to serve you out of goodwill. They are making a profit. You use them, but deny their profit.

>Installing an ad-blocker is much simpler.

Simple doesn't mean right.

>You use them, but deny their profit.

It's not the consumer's job to make companies profitable. If their business model relies on people viewing ads when they don't have to, that's their problem.

It's a consumer's obligation to follow the provider's ToS. If you don't agree to those ToS, don't use the service.

I think that if a consumer is to be considered to be obligated to follow the ToS, they should be presented with the ToS /first/ , and also have it be of a length which is actually reasonable for a typical person to read.

A person should generally not (there are exceptions in e.g. emergencies) be expected to agree to something without specifically choosing to agree to it, and knowing what they are "agreeing" to.

I think it is perfectly plausible that everyone knows google, youtube, facebook, reddit, SO and other such sites rely on ads to operate. Yet people with adblock continuously use those services while blocking the business model which allows them to operate. It's not a case of loading a single page and not knowing what's there. You profit from those services every single day and knowingly harm their operations.

Ok so again, I personally don't use adblock, so I do not, by using adblock, harm their operations. I don't know if you meant "you" as in me, or "you" as in the rhetorical "you", but I wanted to clarify that, in case you meant me in particular.

Yes, it is true that one who frequently uses sites like google and youtube and such probably knows that those websites have ads, and rely on ad income to operate. This is separate from whether the person knows whether using an adblocker is forbidden by the ToS of the website. And I think this might be somewhere where you have changed what you are talking about when it is convenient to you? (which you have accused someone else of)

In fact, from the ToS s that I have read, I don't think I have ever seen one that specifically forbids using an ad blocker while using the website! At least, as far as I can remember. Forbidding intentionally making false ad impressions, I have of course seen, but I do not remember any ToS forbidding using an ad blocker.

So, case in point, I do not know that the google search ToS forbids using an ad blocker while visiting the site, and in fact it is my (weakly held) belief that it probably does not (but I could be wrong about that).

I don't think one should be considered to have agreed to a ToS as a contract if it would be unreasonable to believe that the person truly did read and understand the ToS. If a person can reasonably be expected to know that what they did was against the ToS, despite it being unreasonable to believe that they read and understood all of the ToS, then that could make sense for them to be held to I suppose. But I don't think that the average person can be reasonably assumed to know that the ToS forbids using an ad blocker (and, in fact, I don't know that many ToS s do forbid using an ad blocker. I don't remember any of the one's I've looked at forbidding it after all).

Unless one is specifically made aware of an agreement, I don't think they can be reasonably considered to have agreed to it. One cannot unknowingly agree.

I run ads on my website, and I don't mind if users run an ad blocker while viewing it. (Though, I suppose its not much of a business, so that might make a difference there).

So, to conclude:

I don't think most ToS s have clauses which forbid the use of ad blocking on the site.

I don't think one can reasonably expect a user to know that ad blocking is forbidden by the ToS unless they are specifically informed of it.

I don't think users who have not knowingly entered into an agreement to not block ads on the site are obligated to not block ads on the site.

>Why do you feel entitled to use all the sites? They are not there to serve you out of goodwill. They are making a profit.

Most sites are doing it out of goodwill. There was a time when commercial organisations weren't allowed on the Internet at all. They're the interlopers here, they can play by the existing rules: if you put it on the Web, you expect your content to be accessed by a variety of people who will format it in their own ways.

So it's not about "Hyperlinks don't come with a "this site is full of ads" marker". It's about you feeling entitled to other people's work for free, because... Oh yeah, because long time ago, the internet was not commercialized. Well, newsflash, it is now and those "rules" you talk about are no longer valid.

The fact that you made up a reason for your actions only shows that deep down, you know what you're doing is not right. Your mind just makes up justifications for it.

> So it's not about "Hyperlinks don't come with a "this site is full of ads" marker". It's about you feeling entitled to other people's work for free, because... Oh yeah, because long time ago, the internet was not commercialized.

It's the same thing. The reason that hyperlinks expect the site on the other end of the link to be freely available is because that's the custom and practice of the internet.

> The fact that you made up a reason for your actions only shows that deep down, you know what you're doing is not right.

So it's not about "it's simple to avoid advertising if you don't like it", now it's about "it's not right"? Who's making up their reasons now?

>The fact that you made up a reason for your actions only shows that deep down, you know what you're doing is not right. Your mind just makes up justifications for it.

So it's absolutely impossible for anyone's morality to ever differ from yours, and if they claim it does, they're just lying to themselves?

I don't make up justifications for my actions. He said he blocks ads because he doesn't know if a link will lead to a page littered with ads, but that's not the case at all. He uses services which he obviously knows rely on ads to keep running, yet breaks their business model

You guys use a business and refuse to abide to its terms of service. In what school of thought that is acceptable?

In my country, you buy bus passes on the bus stop and you perforate it yourself when you get on the bus to signal that you've paid for your ride. You want to tell me I can get a free ride on the bus because it is not my job to make the bus company profitable. Are you serious?

> I don't make up justifications for my actions. He said he blocks ads because he doesn't know if a link will lead to a page littered with ads, but that's not the case at all.

It's absolutely the case. I held off installing an ad-blocker for a long time, longer than most of my friends. If ads had not become more intrusive I would not have started blocking them.

Sure, I'm getting other benefits, but not knowing if a link will lead to a page littered with ads is absolutely the cause of my blocking them; if that wasn't the case I wouldn't do it.

> In my country, you buy bus passes on the bus stop and you perforate it yourself when you get on the bus to signal that you've paid for your ride. You want to tell me I can get a free ride on the bus because it is not my job to make the bus company profitable.

No - you should follow the custom, practice and culture of bus-catching.

I thought I'd jump straight to what I thought you were implying. But if you want the direct answers: I use google, android, youtube, facebook, and occasionally reddit. I don't generally visit newspaper sites. I know most of them run ads, and still use them even when I know they run ads; FWIW I still use them when I'm using a computer that doesn't have an adblocker installed (fairly frequent), under which circumstance I'm a lot more cautious about visiting sites I don't recognize.