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Website Mass-Bans Users Who Mention AdBlock
An anonymous reader writes to recommend TechDirt's take on the dustup over at the Escapist, which recently tried on banning users from their forums for the mere mention of AdBlock. In the thread in which the trouble started, a user complained that an ad for Time Warner Cable was slowing down his computer. Users who responded to the poster by suggesting "get Firefox and AdBlock" found themselves banned from the forums. The banned parties didn't even need to admit they used AdBlock, they simply had to recommend it as a solution to a troublesome ad. The forum's recently amended posting guidelines do indeed confirm that the folks at the Escapist believe that giving browsing preference advice is a "non forgivable" offense. After a lot of user protest, the forum unbanned the transgressors but heaped on the guilt.
Not too long ago, around a year ago, Blizzard added banner ads to the official World of Warcarft game forums.
People strongly objected on the basis that nobody can post to those forums unless they already pay Blizzard money for an account, so why should paying customers be subjected to the advertisements? They clearly didn't need advertising revenue to pay the bills, it was just a crass money-grab. This spawned many posts on how to block the ads. The result? All of the ad-blocking discussion threads deleted, and all of their creators banned from the forums. Some people complained, but they soon found out that talking about deleted threads is also grounds for a ban.
It sucks, but what can you do? The only way they would have any incentive to change is if people actually quit the game in protest over the decision, which isn't particularly likely. They perhaps spent some of their good will by way of their actions, but there's no real immediate or obvious negative repercussions.
I am torn as well. I understand the need for advertisements to subsidize content on the web, but I also see it as an issue when a company abuses the ubiquity of ads to slip them in as a money-grab when they clearly aren't dependent on advertising for their revenue. Moreover, I really feel like it should be obvious at this point that banner ads are stupid. They fact that people go to such lengths to remove them should indicate how people feel about them. They're really no different then spam; except spam is free, so it can be profitable with abysmal response rates. Does anyone actually buy anything as result of banner ads? Sure people click them all the time, but how often is it done on purpose? The damn things are just in the way. I'm constantly accidentally tapping on ads on my iPhone, but I sure as hell have never bought anything as a result.
Annoying flash ads, banner ads, and javascript-fueled nightmare ads are not selling anything. Anyone notice those are all things Google does not use? I think they know a thing or two about the business of internet ads. They've got 25 billion dollars in the bank that says internet advertising works better when its not obtrusive and obnoxious.
[...]They've been redirected into oblivion in my /etc/hosts since then.
Yes, because simply not visiting the site would be silly.
From http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars
[...]We made the mistake of assuming that everyone who is blocking ads at Ars is doing so with malice. As it turns out, only a few people are, and many (most?) indicated you are happy to help out. That's what led to this hopefully informative post.
Our experiment is over, and we're glad we did it because it led to us learning that we needed to communicate our point of view every once in a while. Sure, some people told us we deserved to die in a fire. But that's the Internet![...]
What dicks!
So use a better ad company. Project Wonderful lets you moderate ads if you choose, or whitelist by advertiser, or just allow a free-for-all. And they don't allow arbitrary scripting, so no XSS or browser attacks.
They were hostile to NoScript users too, who didn't even notice Ars had done anything until the forum postings started.
Once some NoScript users mentioned that, and then loudly said they'd never, under any circumstances, enable scripting for doubleclick, etc, Ars got nasty toward them too.
I'm getting so many packs of 15s that I would be rich if it was possible to sell them. "Disable Ads" checked since around 2007.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Google learned this lesson back when every other search provider were doing banner ads, and this is one reason why Google has leapfrogged ahead of the pack and stayed ahead so long. Text ads are fine. Ads which require 5 megabyte .swf files are just plain unacceptable.
The sweet irony here, of course, is that DoubleClick are one of the worst offenders and are actually owned by Google, now.
If we are not allowed to talk about AdBlock plus, then lets talk about "document.write".
Most (probably all) ads are created with "document.write", so simply block "document.write". And enable "document.write" for the few sites that you really enjoy.
Add the following to "prefs.js" (seamonkey, firefox, ...):
user_pref("capability.policy.default.HTMLDocument.write", "noAccess");
... ");
user_pref("capability.policy.trusted.HTMLDocument.write", "sameOrigin");
user_pref("capability.policy.trusted.sites", "http://localhost http://forums.mozillazine.org/
user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "trusted");
See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/ConfigPolicy.html for more details ...