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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.
What is the value of a site without visitors?
The site owners banned these people because they don't see any value in a site without revenue.
The problem I see with ads is editorial control.
With real magazines ads, editors have some kind of control of the ad after they receive it. For example, they can decide if they accept an ad with a full page giant penis in it selling v14gr4.
However, with web ads, the editors have no control over it. The advertizer has complete control of how the ad looks. And even though at the time of "contracting" the ad the editors may like the types of ad, maybe after a month the ad will get changed to something really annoying.
From the original forum thread, the problem was that someone's computer was slowing to a halt because some random flash ad. That sort of thing is really annoying.
I even have seen similar kind of trouble in pages of open source projects. In one of those pages, the guys used some ad service and got some kind of virus or XSS attack in one of the ads... even though the ad company was supposed to be good!
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When Obama decided that the only way out of this depression was massive spending programs, I affiliated myself with a different party.
I hope it wasn't the Republicans, since the bailout that was required to prevent a depression directly resulting from years of irresponsible lack of oversight was initiated by George W. Bush and merely completed by Obama.
I also hope it wasn't the Libertarians, since it was their lassaiz-faire philosophy of deregulation and strict adherence to the Chicago School of Economics which infected and drove the Republican deregulation push of the last 20 years that in turn was directly responsible for the unregulated behavior that resulted in the current crash, and would have sent us directly into a second Great Depression had Bush/Obama/Brown not acted as they did.
I'm not sure what that leaves ... the Greens? Aryan Nationalists? Socialists? Teabaggers? Communists? The Party of Everything-is-Black-and-White-No-Exceptions-Allowed-and-Anything-That-Doesn't-Fit-My-World-View-Perfectly-Must-Be-a Liberal/Conservative-Conspiracy?
One issue only voting rarely works out--there will be some other issue in your new affiliation that drives you away, like a lone sheep being herded back and forth across the paddock by a playful terrier.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
passive aggressive behavior is only part of the dynamic.. it is reactionary. something like adblock is proactive, which forces the other side to sit up and take notice. since when does visiting some site qualify as a business relationship by default? ...arrogant 'webmaster' mentality taken to extremes I guess..
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.
The thing is that even though click-through rates are bullshit the billboard space is not. If you're a semi-smart consumer you at least check a couple sites and a couple brands before picking one, but WHICH stores and WHICH brands? Oh, the ones you've been fed with the last year and are the first to pop into your mind. There's a diminishing rate of return on checking every store, every model (if such a thing even is possible) as long as you get a good deal on a good model from a reputable seller.
People think they know exactly what you want and isn't affected by ads which is only true for the things that are important to them but ignores everything that's not so important to them. I might know all the high-end CPU models but buy lots of foodstuffs and clothes and furniture and whatnot where it's not like I've gone through any exhaustive search or made a huge in-depth analysis. Nice shirt, best possible shirt purchase? No idea, but I'll buy it anyway. A fashion freak might know every deal on shirts but not have a clue of computers, this is where marketing matters.
Finally, and this is an important point about advertising - ignorance is bliss. Unless they're aware that they overpaid, they don't really care. People just think "Cool, this 600$ computer is amazing, it's so fast and nice and 600$ wasn't much..." even if they could have gotten it for 400$. It's only if they know that they care about the 200$ they "lost", not because it was poor value but because it was a poor deal. If they take the deal then stop looking because they're no longer in the market for any they are happy.
Personally, I hate shopping. If you throw a decent offer in my way I might just to be done shopping. I think these ads are trying to be much the same way, they're not just the window you glance past but the clothes rack in your way. A little obnoxious yes but at the same time something you're not able to dismiss so easily, which might lead you to stop and ahhhhhhh looked at this long enough, I'll buy something now and be done with it. There's definitely business in that in the real world, I don't think the online world is that different.
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I thought you need to enable Javascript to get them in the first place.
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Yours is the second comment I've seen on this article with a stipulation similar to "until they start guaranteeing their ads free of such issues". I'm surprised. What guarantee could they possibly make that would be both convincing and immutable? I say "immutable" because any guarantee they offer now, technical or otherwise, could easily be discarded without notice by future management.
It is wise to consider the ad companies untrusted, and decide when the risk is justified by the potential benefit. Right now, that's looking something like zero percent of cases for the foreseeable future. It only took one malware-infested PDF ad to convince me.
This is the same website that bans you if they think you've commented too quickly on a video. If they didn't have ZP, I'd never go there.
Plus now they are interested, they show through their own actions, they have no moral limit to how far they will go. This action by them is blatantly effectively punishing Thought Crimes. I guess talking about AdBlock is against what the business wants, which is effectively compliant consumers who don't learn how to block advert bombardment.
Talk of Adblock is a signal that the user is empowering themselves. If you want to make money with computers, the last thing you want is the user to become empowered, you need them reliant on you, the man in the middle providing a service.
Long term successful products on computers do not empower users, they make users dependent. Now, for an example, this'll go 2 ways: Windows (insightful please), MacOS (flamebait from the fanboys). But the point is valid. You don't learn about computers using those platforms, you learn about those platforms. We've all seen Windows users who brain shuts down in front of OSX, or Mac users who bitch about any other platform - it is because they are familiar with their platform, but not the ideas behind what they are doing.
Facecrook, Google et al. use the same idea: be the middle man, make the user come to you as the first thing when they need to contact someone, or want some information, etc..
Car analogies break down.
There is one line in the post that intrigued me:
I ad-block sites that I've never been to before. If they look like a cool site or something that I'd use in the future, I turn off the ad-blocker on that site for any future visits. It's my way of saying "hmm, good job" to the site.
I realized then that most websites offer opt-out advertising. That is, you have to see it unless you pay, use an ad-blocking program, or contribute something that the owners deem worthy of removing adds (like that tempting "no ads for good karma" thing I keep seeing on /.).
I agree with what this community manager said and I would dare ask the logical follow-up question: why don't websites ask you to opt-in to their advertising? The idea would be simple - you visit the site and after X page views, or some other evil metric, you are taken to a page that says: hey, you can help us out with $$$, view ads, or just be a leech. I firmly believe that you will find that the majority of people who become engaged with the content will select either the $$$ or advertising paths. Right then and there your advertising space is worth more than all of the traditional "opt-out" websites.
So, do any advertising market providers allow for this?
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
TV is passive entertainment. Site forums aren't, so your comparison isn't exactly accurate.
Besides having rules on directing continuity people to keep viewers in place for the ads though, TV companies use localisation, CGI to alter advert content, higher sound volume during the adbreaks, adverts during the programmes themselves (not counting the product placement) and they crop the programmes' lengths to suit rigid advertisement times.
And none of that even mentions the lengths they'll go to censor writers, commission programmes for the braindead and shuffle their schedules around in direct competition with each other - just to pander to the advertisers.
Oh yeah, and in Ireland and the U.K. you're required by law to pay for a TV licence to watch that crap.
If they acted like that on your favourite website, would you still use it?
After reading your post I thought, yes maybe I should disable adblock for slashdot. So I did. And I got a flash ad. And I enabled adblock again.