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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 1 year 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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[-] mikeyBoy14@lemmy.world 0 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

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