A good proportion of HN, judging by comments, thinks all advertising should be illegal in all circumstances because trying to persuade someone to do something is immoral.
Edit: "A good proportion", not all. Probably 20%? The other 80% indeed are just against tracking/privacy/bandwidth/security, and the last 10% are fine as is.
> trying to persuade someone to do something is immoral.
It depends on how you do it. If your ad takes up a lot of bandwidth and processing power, to the point where by the time the article loads on my phone I can't scroll through the actual content because my CPU is busy trying to render your pretty little ad, then you've fucked me, you've fucked yourself, and you've fucked the content provider.
It's the equivalent of a local pizza chain sending someone to play a vuvuzela outside my bedroom window.
The problem is that I don't know whether ads coming in are a person politely handing out flyers, or a vuvuzela-playing jackass - and that's assuming he's not trying to literally pick-pocket me - so it's easier to just rub my magic ad-block lamp and tell the Genie to disappear everyone.
That's really not the impression I get around here. I think it's clearly the intrusiveness with which ads are displayed and all those strings (trackers) that come attached with them.
I think most people on HN would agree that ads which don't require huge amounts of scripts, show video, play audio, connect to 17 tracking networks or make up 70% of the page weight would very much be tolerable.
Yup. I'm total ad hater, and yet I'd be totally fine with plainly marked, non-intrusive, simple ads, that don't waste bandwidth and CPU power. E.g. what AdWords originally was. If they don't distract, I'm more willing to actually read them, even out of curiosity.
If ads aren't obtrusive, irrelevant, insulting, distracting, inappropriate, or malevolent, I have no problem with them. But until at least those last two still exist, even infrequently, I must strongly recommend an ad-blocker to all friends and family for their own protection.
I don't have a problem with ads, I mostly object to tracking, profile building, and the sharing of that profile. When I read a People magazine in my doctor's waiting room, nobody knows much about me in particular. There are online ad networks that serve dumb ads and those I generally whitelist.
You have that option - you can relinquish your citizenship. Otherwise, taxes fund public goods and services you benefit from, such as medical care, infrastructure, education, crime prevention and border security.
Edit: "A good proportion", not all. Probably 20%? The other 80% indeed are just against tracking/privacy/bandwidth/security, and the last 10% are fine as is.