194

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 1 year ago by ThreeHopsAhead@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

top 17 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] madcaesar@lemmy.world 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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 11 months ago

I love a big bowl of surgery for breakfast

[-] nachobel@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Mm delicious triple bypass

[-] Blizzard@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 months ago

You know what's immoral? Advertising

Just this would do.

[-] Merulox@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago

Ohh, right, I see, thank you

[-] madcaesar@lemmy.world -2 points 11 months ago

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

[-] Thagthebarbarian@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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 11 months ago

So fucking what?

[-] mikeyBoy14@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

So it's not the best analogy.

[-] owenfromcanada@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago

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

this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2023

194 points (97.1% liked)

Privacy

29763 readers

658 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS