The assumption is that most are not ripping the ads out of the magazine without seeing them at all. The assumption and social contract was the page is sent to you with ads and you take in all of it.
You can make all sorts of loose statements like this then draw the line where you feel it’s wrong. It will still be arbitrary.
To continue stretching examples. Developers chose to release software as is. Through some combo of your reasoning above, is it okay to pirate/crack software? Most of the time HNers will be against software piracy but for blocking ads.
I care more about the obvious social contracts in place and the obviousness of creators are supporting what they created by showing ads or charging for their software.
Another example was people getting mad at someone for wanting to split a Stratchery subscription. One big point was it’s against the TOS. Some of those people surely block ads and would not care if TOSs say you can’t. I actually find the Stratchery situation sympathetic because I believe the person was unemployed. Similarly if you have a super old computer or limited data dude to financial constraints. Yeah, that is an exception where the morals make sense.
However going against Stratchery, a pretty small time operation by splitting the cost amongst some people for one login is obviously not cool for the average middle class on up person.
> If they want money, they're free to return HTTP 402 Payment Required.
This is not true in the real world. The amount of backlash you can get for doing that will almost never be worth it. False positives are an issue as well.
Similarly, software that requires you to always be online and aggressively verifies you have paid for said software which ends up creating some friction, is frowned upon too.
Or Stratchery suspending you or sending similar headers for logging in via IPs far from one another. The false positives would be lead to a Streisand Effect
You can make all sorts of loose statements like this then draw the line where you feel it’s wrong. It will still be arbitrary.
To continue stretching examples. Developers chose to release software as is. Through some combo of your reasoning above, is it okay to pirate/crack software? Most of the time HNers will be against software piracy but for blocking ads.
I care more about the obvious social contracts in place and the obviousness of creators are supporting what they created by showing ads or charging for their software.
Another example was people getting mad at someone for wanting to split a Stratchery subscription. One big point was it’s against the TOS. Some of those people surely block ads and would not care if TOSs say you can’t. I actually find the Stratchery situation sympathetic because I believe the person was unemployed. Similarly if you have a super old computer or limited data dude to financial constraints. Yeah, that is an exception where the morals make sense.
However going against Stratchery, a pretty small time operation by splitting the cost amongst some people for one login is obviously not cool for the average middle class on up person.
> If they want money, they're free to return HTTP 402 Payment Required.
This is not true in the real world. The amount of backlash you can get for doing that will almost never be worth it. False positives are an issue as well.
Similarly, software that requires you to always be online and aggressively verifies you have paid for said software which ends up creating some friction, is frowned upon too.
Or Stratchery suspending you or sending similar headers for logging in via IPs far from one another. The false positives would be lead to a Streisand Effect