iz (i@z.x) on 4/22/12 wrote:
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>Neither of you answered my question. Do you watch all TV ads or not? Because the moral argument is the same.

Sort of. The majority of my television watching comes in the form of live sporting events. If it's football, there are zero commercials, but I have to stare at ugly adverts all around the pitch. If it's hockey/basketball, the commercials, are usually short. The remainder of what I watch is usually time-shifted content, so I skip over commercials.

However, I reject that the "moral argument" is entirely the same between blocking ads, and skipping television commercials. When I pay for cable television, money flows from:

Me --> Cable provider --> Cable network --> Television show creators

Thus, even when I'm skipping commercials, there's still a flow of cash from me to content creators.

In contrast, when you block all ads on a site, you have completely denied that website of income. That is, unless, you'd be willing to pay for a subscription. Would you pay even $10/year for access to this site in exchange for no banner ads? No? Then you're probably a freeloader.


>If TV ads would be of good quality and only between programs

Watch Dutch programming.


>If I visit a website, I do that because I want to visit THAT website, not some
>random crap on the internet.

It is likely that many of the websites you visit only exist because of advertising-oriented income.


> By not hosting the ads yourself you don't take responsibility
>for them (and also slowing down the loading).

Where do you expect small websites to find advertisers if not through advertising networks? Do you expect these small websites to partner with vendors directly? Vendors have millions of dollars in advertising dollars they need to spend. They aren't going to accept the overhead of dealing with 10,000 advertising outlets, each representing $1000 in business. It's not like David can go to Intel and say, "hi, I represent $250 per week in advertising value to you."

Small, tech-based websites have no option other than to deal with advertising networks. This means they are stripped of the ability to self-host the advertisements.


>>I think it's very hard for the little guy to carve out a living in this way.
>
>It's also very hard for the little guy to carve out a living with ad revenue. But
>it can't hurt to give the option, can it?

RWT used to offer a membership program when I first started reading. They eliminated it for some reason.