There's no implied agreement - a product is offered at no cost, and I'm under no legal, ethical or moral obligation to look at anything. I'm a weirdo who still buys the paper newspaper. I throw out the Thursday auto advertisements and the Sunday ads.
Content producers made a conscious decision to aggregate their screen real estate and outsource ad placement to unrelated third parties. The result is a cesspool of awful, low engagement content. Its so bad that they enter into awful agreements with aggregators to repackage their content for pennies. That's their problem, not mine.
On the flip, I live in a state capital, and when the legislature is in session, interest groups spend 10x what they spend on useless online ad spots to buy full-page or panel ads in the printed newspaper. Presumably they aren't doing that in an effort to set money on fire.
>"I'm under no legal, ethical or moral obligation to look at anything"
That would depend on you moral theory of choice; applying Kantian (deontological) moral theory, your behavior violates the principle of 'universalizability'.
Seems like an absurd leap to me. Am I obliged to read the sports section of a newspaper?
What does it mean when a entire category of commerce is so toxic that government security officials recommend that civilian agencies preclude employees from seeing it?
>"The precise meaning of universalizability is contentious, but the most common interpretation is that the categorical imperative asks whether the maxim of your action could become one that everyone could act upon in similar circumstances."
>"For instance, one can determine whether a maxim of lying to secure a loan is moral by attempting to universalize it and applying reason to the results. If everyone lied to secure loans, the very practices of promising and lending would fall apart, and the maxim would then become impossible."
If everyone were to block ads, the publications that you're reading would not be able to pay for the content they publish. Note that 'universalizability' requires a somewhat static analysis, and usually doesn't look at how systems might adapt to changed circumstances, though this is not a big problem here, as you have voluntarily chosen to interact with ad-supported publishers under the current regime.
Content on the web was much better before the scourge of advertising took over. I very much wish everybody would universally block ads. Appealing to the current situation in a static sense is a cop out that lets you condemn what would be a welcome reversion.
Say what you actually mean rather than just invoking a nebulous condemnation of "privilege".
The information on the web used to be of much higher quality. Within the first page of search results you'd usually find a no-nonsense website full of painstakingly curated information. Who had the means to access that information is orthogonal to its quality.
Take a moment to consider how expensive and exclusive access to the internet was "back in the good ol' days" and maybe you'll be able to connect the dots. If you still can't there's nothing I can do for you sorry.
You might be arguing that privileged people make better websites, or implying that the other person is saying that, or some variant, or...?
mindslight is not saying we should revert everything back to those days, such as the internet being expensive and exclusive. They want sites to stop using ad revenue. Those two things are not tied together. Unless you're arguing they are tied together, in which case again you need to explain yourself.
I can infer several arguments that you could hope to be implying. But I'm not going to guess at the specific one you're trying to make just to argue with myself.
In general: Correlation is not causation. As I said, the quality of information was orthogonal to who could access it. And furthermore, even in modern times advertising does not pay for Internet access nor computing devices.
> Note that 'universalizability' requires a somewhat static analysis
Sounds very convenient. You are allowed to make one logical step (everyone blocks adds => publishing companies go bankrupt) but are not allowed to make the equally sound step of (everyone blocks adds => publishing companies will seek other revenue sources such as paywalls).
But if you say i’m not allowed to argue the second one let’s talk about the first kind.
So universal add blocking puts those companies who keep clinging to add supported operation into bankruptcy. Goodridance. It is not like one must have free-as-in-beer services to have a coherent moral compass. They go bankrupt and we will manage without them. Totally consistent.
Similarly you wouldn’t say that the idea of punishing murderers lacks ‘universability’ just because it would shut down the Assasin’s Guild.
But you seem to want to read the publications with ads...
If I extend your (unreasonable) murder analogy, I'd have to say that you were hiring the Assassin's Guild, but refusing to pay because you don't like their terms.
Content producers made a conscious decision to aggregate their screen real estate and outsource ad placement to unrelated third parties. The result is a cesspool of awful, low engagement content. Its so bad that they enter into awful agreements with aggregators to repackage their content for pennies. That's their problem, not mine.
On the flip, I live in a state capital, and when the legislature is in session, interest groups spend 10x what they spend on useless online ad spots to buy full-page or panel ads in the printed newspaper. Presumably they aren't doing that in an effort to set money on fire.