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A Campaign to Block Firefox Users?
rarwes writes "A website is aiming at blocking Firefox users. This because a fraction of the Firefox users installed an Ad Blocker and are therefor 'stealing money' from website owners that use ads. They recommend using IE, Opera or IE tab. From the site: 'Demographics have shown that not only are FireFox users a somewhat small percentage of the internet, they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending, therefore blocking FireFox seems to have only minimal financial drawbacks, whereas ending resource theft has tremendous financial rewards for honest, hard-working website owners and developers.' Be interesting to see where they are getting their numbers from.
Just to state the immediately fucking obvious: What right do you have to demand that they let you view your website? Way to be a self-entitled hypocrite.
My Greatest Heist - Muisc partly inspired by the unbeatable Qwantz
Or they are people who, Oh don't know - run a useful and popular free-to-use Web resource and need to raise some income to maintain the service. Shocking idea isn't it?
I notice, by the way that you are posting on a free ad-funded Web site.
I'm going to have to say - you may be missing the central point of advertising, web advertising and why in fact it's absolutely true that without it a lot of sites couldn't operate, particularly newspaper and magazine websites also operating online.
You talk about 'not clicking the ad' as being akin to blocking it - but most advertising doesn't even offer a 'click though' kind of response. In fact Internet Advertising, which is still in it's adolescence comparatively is one of the few advertising methods that actually allows a direct and immediate interaction. Banner campaigns are also for the most part still a lot cheaper than television campaigns.
Banner ad's are also sold by 'impressions' which means the number of people who see them, or the number of times they are displayed - at least in the realm of 'respectable' advertisers and publishers, not (for the most part) the number of times they are clicked on.
I would also point out that in pretty much any 'national grade' website there are very strict rules about the use of sound, file size, testing for processor speed, and handling of invasive or otherwise destructive ad creative, and you really shouldn't be so quick to lump the 'click the monkey' ads in with an industry that is working very hard to continue to keep news and entertainment content free, and deliver engaging promotional content where possible.
At the end of the day without an ad supported model, most content publishers would have to seek alternative means of remuneration which would be much more difficult to deal with than an animated banner, or simply close their very expensive websites. (How much do you want to make in salary a year exactly...?)
This industry is an important part of the internet ecosystem, and without it I know a lot of folks all over who would need to be seeking other work. I think for the most part it's time to start talking about 'standards' for the industry, which in my opinion should include universal technological incompatibly.
Any website blocking firefox because a small percentage of firefox users are blocking ads has got to be out of it's mind. The FF community might be small, but we are loud... Also, it just straight up isn't good PR for any site participating.
Why do you WANT to block ads on an ad-supported site that you WANT to read because you find it's content worthwhile? Feels like shoplifting. Oh, and please spare me the five page on treatise on the difference between 'theft' and copyright infringement.