Ad-blocking is piracy, and that's okay

Ads are an unwanted local infection that brings malware and brainwash people. Blocking ads is the sane behavior

? I agree but that doesn't make it not piracy. Are you implying piracy is not sane behavior?

if you're arguing this, it's probably already vanishingly rare for you to be clicking on ads or looking anything more than a glance at them. and on my work device, where i didn't install adblockers as an experiment, i don't recall ever seeing ads that ship malware, and i commit quite a bit of tomfoolwery on my work device.

if by malware you mean how viewing ads slows down your machine, that what people say of Denuvo.

(not sure what you meant by the jehovah's witnesses part. are they actually starving?)

isn’t piracy, it’s self-defense

It can be both. What's wrong with a little piracy in self-defense?

i do block ads because they waste my time. that's still piracy, and there's a bajillion ethical reasons to commit piracy

When I see an ad, I make note of the product and tell at least two people at random how that product gave my uncle cancer or burned down his house killing his entire family. Imagine a movement where every single person took ads and used them to create anti ads. Make company's think before they steal our time and data. They will likely send some legal goons for you but this is the Chicago way

no, and neither is looking away from internet ads. blocking on the other hand stops the ad company from paying

Yep. I don't recall signing any contract...

Correct, but how does that make it not piracy? Is something being piracy or not predicated on you being party to some deal?

Let's say a movie is not released in my country. I cannot buy it so I torrent it. Did I not pirate the movie because there was no deal I was involved in? Because that's what your argument says.

I think this is the only reply that hits the mark. Most of the others are mentioning malware, the morals of adverts or how obnoxious they are. To steal implies to take without payment, but the payment is not from the viewer, it is from the advertiser,who is paying.

I'd argue that blocking is more similar to taking a restroom break when a commercial is shown on the TV. No reasonable person would say that that's stealing.

you are involved in the deal, because advertisers pay by how many times the ad is displayed (or clicked). just like how you are involved in the deal between the distributor and cinema, because the pay depends on how many tickets you buy.

My family always used to mute ads on the TV when I was growing up.

I guess that's piracy too, eh?

i value social contracts over law, and especially for small websites, when their advertising is unintrusive i think i should help them survive and keep running. a ton of major things i use like great independent news sources and some hosters of pirated content use ads while i don't have a membership.

by analogy, maybe piracy doesn't reduce indie devs' revenues that much as it provides word-of-mouth. but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay for them.

Or give them access to my network or my compute.

not paying attention to ads is very different from blocking the ads

Agreed. Though I don't think these people should be downvoting an opinion here simply because it's unpopular. Either that's my unpopular opinion, or there's some other reason they're downvoting.

Your argument does not follow. You are saying it's not illegal therefore it's not piracy. But most piracy, in most countries, is not illegal, so what does legality have to do with it?

I can download a copyrighted movie right now and I'm not breaking any laws. Which obviously is pirating the movie. Which is not illegal (if I don't share it further).

According to Wikipedia piracy is "downloading content without permission". You yourself said it is against the wishes of the content provider (which you are morally correct to ignore), so it fits the definition.

What am I missing?

Also: pirate paid products until you figure out if it's worth it's money. Also, buy exclusively software without anti-consumer practices and DRM (games on GOG, Bandcamp), also pirate capitalist propaganda movies like Marvel, Hollywood stuff if you like watching it.

Also, buy used hardware, since almost all the hardware companies are extremely into neoliberal capitalism.

While DELL makes great laptops, I'll never buy a new product from them.

I’m the sole decision maker as to what content I download to my personal devices, and that goes for web content as well as other things. If I don’t allow content from domains like doubleclick.net then that’s my right and nobody can overrule that decision.

i don't like the idea of excluding people who don't have the means to pay from service ("monetize it as a business"), and when i was young i had to avoid paid services. many online creations that got popular like wavetro's animations and modrinth simply couldn't keep up with costs by just donations.

Piracy is not stealing/theft. That is a corporate lie.

post office gets paid either way, website doesn't. you're describing looking away from the website's ads while your ad-blocker's off.

That makes the piracy a lot more ethical and probably something I support.

i also like to smell armpits

(you can have tracker free ads)

In theory, yes. But in practice? It's quite rare these days.

(Honestly, I don't even see why they want to track users so much. Is it really that effective? You could just have targeted ads based on the content of the web page you're on, rather than based on the identity of the user. That should still target your ads pretty well, and without infringing on anyone's privacy in the slightest. Plus, you don't need the overhead of maintaining a giant database of every potential customer in the world.)

to be fair, the most popular ad platforms like google ads use trackers, so it is something to consider. but i do agree that this kind of lumping is bad since this thinking hurts ethical ad platforms too.

Actually this is an unpopular opinion or your circle is so different from the average that you are almost aliens, I have yet to meet someone that would sincerely say that they think that not watching ads is breaking social contract.

i'd say the other comments disagree