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Ask Slashdot: To AdBlock Or Not To AdBlock?
Is there an acceptable compromise to behavioral targeting? On the one hand, I don't want to be profiled by unscrupulous advertisers. On the other hand, I feel that the advertiser is the middleman between the things I care about (content) and the dollars that support those things. My compromise is to take a page out of BF Skinner's book, Walden Two, and view the situation as a sort of absurd behaviorist experiment. Basically, I Adblock everything, but whitelist the sites I support. Is this too much? Not enough? What should individuals do protect themselves, if anything at all?
You may be buying the products, but that doesn't mean the web sites are receiving any revenue. Google ads and many others often only pay when clicked.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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So you're subscribing to /. then?
I'm not, but Slashdot gave me a little checkbox to hide the ads anyway :)
I don't know what all the fuss is about. Advertising is a perfectly legitimate way to fund a site if there is no other way. People will grumble about having to view ads, but most will flatly refuse to pay even a few dollars to fund the site.
It does go too far sometimes though. I've had friends complain that they mentioned the word "diet" on a (seemingly) unrelated forum and then suddenly facebook is bombarding them with weight loss products. Targeted advertising should at least have the decency to be sneaky, not obvious. I use adblock though and have never, ever, seen an ad on Facebook. I started using adblock when all the ads made my dialup connection too slow, and have never bothered turning it off even though i'm on a much faster connection now.