Slashdot Mirror
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?
Advertising is evil. No need to rationalize ad blocking. Kick the marketers to the curb and move on. If the site needs another source of revenue, they'll find it be it micropayments, subscriptions, etc. And if you really care about the content you can then pay to get it, and if not, nothing of value is lost.
Text ads, fine
images, fine for now (the increasing use of caps on "unlimited" plans may change this in the future)
Punch the monkey, flash, talking, or auto start ads, block the shit of them
I hate advertising in all forms, including that from vendors whom I might otherwise like. I'd much rather live in a world without advertising than one with one. So, for me, that's basically the world I live in.
No, I don't care that your revenue depends on advertising. I don't want your buggy whips, even if they're "free," even if you won't give me stuff for "free" unless I take a buggy whip. Find some other way to pay the bills.
And I don't think my attitude is at all outrageous or selfish. Would you accept "free" cake that came topped with "free" output from the sewage plant because that was the only way they could dispose of the waste? Would you feel guilty about decontaminating the cake before eating it? If you couldn't decontaminate the cake, would you still eat it anyway?
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
adblock everything. all the time.
advertisements fill our brains with unrequested rubbish.
I AdBlock everything. One, I dislike looking at ads. Two, I dislike business models that are based on ads.
I don't care if AdBlock destroys the Internet as we know it. The Internet as we know it could use a little constructive destruction.
A whitelist approach seems most reasonable to me.
Simple, unobtrusive text ads? Sure.
Huge Flash seizure-inducing videos with sound that play automatically? Go to hell.
Some sites (even slashdot) get so heavy laden with adverts that simply loading any content becomes a headache on high-latency connections like HughesNet. FF + ABP to the rescue.
I fully support adblock plus - It's a fully transformative experience compared to browsing without it. Pages load quicker, load without the random long-pauses from faulty ad servers, and from not having to traverse dozens of servers just for a small amount content.
That, and your view is uncluttered with intentionally misleading images, many kinds of annoying sound and images, and countless script-based frustrations that advertisers are ever-increasingly willing to push on their prospective customers.
Simply put, AdBlockers do an amazing job at helping me retain some minimal level comfort that humanity can sometimes retain some motivations greater than misleading manipulation - even if you have to filter your view to extensively to see that sometimes.
Ryan Fenton
The list of plugins to block advertisers is fairly long. As a web consumer, I like making the web browsing experience faster and less likely to contain drive-by downloads. As a web designer, seeing people block the income-generating ads would make me RAGE!
Even with blocking cookies, ads, flash cookies, pixel tracking, and deleting history when the browser close, the advertisers still manage to track my habits by IP address or unique browser fingerprinting. I feel no remorse blocking everything I can find.
If I like the content of the website, I might buy something from them or their Amazon store, especially if it was something I was going to get anyway.
Present the facts and let each person decide for his/herself.
Personally I always block the third party "analytic" sites and anything else that slows down my connection to the page that I'm trying to see. Sorry Slashdot.. Clean up the off site ads, and maybe I'll let them through.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's not like I would ever click one of those ads anyway.
Simply by asking question, you are committed to doing the right thing. Follow your morals.
Also, by my reasoning you are a better person than me. I did not consider unblocking, even after reading this:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love/
I've been online since 1997, and I've never, ever clicked on an advert other than in error. I've never bought anything because of an advert either. They're pointless.
There's enough evidence that moving, flashing, and otherwise annoying advertisements do little for your concentration. They can even effect your brain long after viewing a Web page. Block all advertising for your own good unless said advertising is already party of video content or guarantees to only serve static images.
What has always confused me about ads is this: does the content provider get paid when I click an ad, or simply for loading it?
I never click ads in the rare cases where I do see them. They all look so unproffesional, like every company in the world got their 12 year-old to design it for them. This gives them an air of untrustworthiness that instantly repels me from them. Why has no one figured out a truly passive, targeted, and un-decietful ad system? Why do I even NEED AdBlock in the first place?
... it's that so many times ad-serving networks end up being compromised and send ads that end up installing malware on your computer: if sites ran their own SIMPLE ads (plain images, served by their own website, no flash/iframe/... crap) there would be a lot less problems.
Unfortunately that kind of ad-serving costs more money to do (easier to farm this out to an ad network) and since there are no penalties for doing so (if your ad provider is compromised and thousands of your users get hit by drive-by malware you say "sorry, not responsible, it's the ad provider's fault") that's why we're in the situation we're in where most tech savy people adblock as much as possible to reduce risks, which unfortunately hurts the content providers...
I honestly wish there was some sort of scheme where you could have some sort of microtransaction way to give $$$ to websites you use. Say you like /. a lot, you could decide that every time you visit, you'd pay $0.01 with a maximum of $0.25/day, say you don't like as much another site but you don't want to completely freeload, you could decide you still give them $0.01 but only with a maximum of $0.01/day. It might seem low, but with a lot of users it could add up quite a bit for sites, and I think more than the current ad-based approach.
Yes, this could probably add up to $50-100/month, but I'd be totally willing to pay that because I'd be supporting the sites I chose to, and sites wouldn't have to deal with subscriptions, they'd just get paid by the microtransaction provider once a month (minus of course a flat fee of some sort). The microtransaction providers could compete on fees etc. as long as there was interoperability so users wouldn't have to worry...
-- the cake is a lie
But I do disable animated GIFs, flash and Javascript in my browser. If you can't convey your ad to me in a single static image, I'm not clicking on it. I click through a fair number of Google ads. Often they're exactly what I'm looking for, anyway. The more obnoxious an ad is, the less likely I am to click on it. The more obnoxious a page is, the less likely I am to hang around for very long.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Based on my experience there are plenty of people subsidizing my adblocked browsing by having multiple tool bars, search engines, helper apps, etc. that I don't feel too guilty.
I would not block any ads at all if they were static images. But they almost never are. And I CAN NOT STAND trying to look at the screen or read something while there is ANY type of movement or animation at the same time. It is just too distracting. So, greed has done them in.
I won't even mention crap like hyper mouse-overs, SOUND, and other extremely annoying "features" because just the animation is enough.
Either they're so lazy they don't care or they don't know how to get rid of them.
If you feel bad about circumventing their terrible business model, just wait until they're broadcasting commercials directly into your dreams.
And they laughed at me for wearing the tinfoil hat! Who's laughing now!
I react very negatively to adverts. The more a company puts it's message in front of me, the less likely I am to buy from them. I instinctively avoid products with heavy TV marketing campaigns, because they can't represent good value for money, given that the cost of the campaign comes out of the price I'm paying.
So I adblock everything... and by doing so, I save advertisers from getting filed under 'I hate those irritating people and won't buy anything from them'. I'm more likely to buy from a company if I don't see their ads than If I do.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
...doesn't understand how the Internet works. On a simpler level, there is no reason that just because I load file A (content I want), I also have to load file B (advertising). My downloading article.html does not make me obligated to download advertisement.png just because there's an image link to it. I will not feel guilted into using my bandwidth to download a single byte I'm not interested in downloading. If I'm stealing, am I also stealing when I use a text mode browser like lynx? Are blind people that use text browsers and a screen reader stealing? If I set Firefox to not download images or turn off JavaScript, am I stealing? If you feel passionately enough about a site that you want to support their ad business model, go ahead and whitelist that site. I feel no need to support any site by downloading things I want. If a site goes out of business because no one looked at its ads, well I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm sure I can find the content I want elsewhere.
When Flash, and flash based advertisements, stop turning my MBP into a toaster. i'll turn off AdBlock.
The End.
Until the site owners stop pimping out their sites to any and all ad engines, I'll use Adblock, NoScript, Flashblock, and anything else I deem necessary to prevent my systems from being targeted by Malware.
If site owners would run their own tested and approved ad's, I'd have zero problem with that, but since they don't have a clue what crap is being passed out by their site, I have no moral problem blocking them all.
I've never blocks ads. However I do block scripts and trackers, which as a consequence blocks a lot of ads anyway.
I don't see why I should open a security vulnerability (client side scripting) just to read a webpage. However I don't have a problem with ads that aren't malicious but those seem to be getting fewer and fewer.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Why bother blocking ads, or making their targeting any worse than necessary? Is your self-will so weak? I very rarely am influenced by or click on ads. But if I have to see ads, I'd rather they be well targeted to my interests. And the ads are not particularly bothersome. What is the big deal really?
(a) This is posted to Ask Slashdot, but it's not really a question, it's a plug for the author's answer.
(b) The slashdot summary is incoherent.
(c) TFA consists of an incoherent intro followed by a description of what the author does. To save you the trouble of wading through the incomprehensible text, here's what he does: "#1 -- Disable third-party cookies [...] #2 -- Use Ghostery to block everything indiscriminately, but whitelist the sites I support."
A typical piece of bizarre reasoning, incoherently expressed, from TFA:
This whole thing about the morally correct response to internet advertising has been rehashed over and over on slashdot. Over and over, people have made the same point: internet ads wouldn't be objectionable if they were like ads in a newspaper or magazine, but because they aren't like that, any user with enough know-how is going to block them. I'm sorry, but I just can't read an article while an animated monkey is jumping up and down next to it on the screen.
Text-oriented sites like slashdot are relatively cheap to run, on a per-user basis, so as long as some percentage of their users don't use ad blockers, these sites are viable.
I asked someone I know, who works in online advertising, whether ad blocking is an issue for her company. I told her I never saw ads on the internet and was surprised that anyone was ... well, dumb enough ... to fail to install ad blocking software. Her response: "Do you use Hulu?"
Find free books.
Imagine you are a bee, or a hummingbird. There are all these delicious flower full of yummy nectar... but around them is this icky, nasty, yellow pollen. The flower needs the pollen to be carried around to propagate the species... but you still don't want to get plant jism all over yourself. So you develop strategies to get the nectar without getting pollen on you. The plant, in turn develops strategies to get more pollen on you while not wasting as much precious nectar. No morality about it, it's just nature.
(For the slow: the user is the bird or bee, the flower is the content provider, the nectar is the content, and the pollen is the advertisement.)
Being an ad-blocker is just one more behavior someone is collecting about you. It makes you more uniquely identifiable Check for yourself here
Basically, I Adblock everything, but whitelist the sites I support.
Does the article submitter find these ads on whitelisted sites useful? Unless they're influencing his/her purchases, the sites in question won't benefit in the long run because both click and display pay rates have to eventually reflect this influence.
Sure ads can make you aware of things, but their sine qua non is to not tell the whole truth. There will always be a big supply of advertising because it's lucrative to spin, the problem is the demand for it is whittling away as advertisers and publishers go overboard, and because the Net has added better ways to research and learn about products.
I think advertising is still needed to allow businesses to get their message out when there isn't sufficient independent help available at an acceptable price. But advertising that interrupts media is among the worst types, just behind telemarketing and door-to-door.
Your individual decision to adblock or not makes no financial consequence for sites you like. Only the prevailing collective behavior affects their bottom line. Simply keep up the adblock and send them a donation if you want to do something much easier and less-costly to yourself (in terms of time and effort and privacy) than trying to support their ads. As for the perspective of sites, those whose users are savvy enough that a significant portion use adblock should take concrete steps to make it easy and safe for their users to whitelist them, or offer other easy ways to support them (like donations, premium/supporter accounts, merch stores, etc.).
I care about my time far too much to spend much effort on such trivial matters.
If spending time thinking about/taking steps to categorize and block sites brings you some pleasure in itself, fine.
Otherwise the fact that you seem to have nothing more important to worry about may be a problem needing more urgent attention.
-Lod
I'm a website owner and I don't block ads unless they are annoying.
Even if you don't click the ads you are still giving the ads views which even on systems that say they are "pay per click ads" actually matter to the advertisers and will end up increasing revenue for the site indirectly.
So I never block ads unless they are annoying. If it has sound without me clicking on it I block it, if it has stuff pop-up by me hovering over it I block it, if it flashes like crazy I will block it. I either block it or just leave the site. A site that has bad advertisements typically has bad content.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
... is advertising that doesn't come across as advertising.
People who say they loathe advertising in any form actually just loathe the bad advertising; the advertising that detracts from what you're trying to do and immediately screams "this is an advertisement, I'm here to interrupt you in some way in the hope that somehow it will get you to buy something even though I've pissed you off."
A few years ago I received an unepxected phone call on my wife's cellphone from a company offering a CDN service. At first I was really pissed off that this company had reached me in such an inappropriate manner ... but the guy on the other end didn't try to sell me anything and the conversation was unlike any telemarketing call that I had ever received. It was personal and appealed to my geeky curiosity (CDNs were very new at the time, the only companies that were using them were heavy traffic movers like Yahoo, so I wanted to know how it worked), it was offering me a solution to a problem I had at the time and the conversation was very informal. Within a minute or two I was actually asking him questions, and that's how it works. And to top it off when I told the guy I wasn't going to buy from him he chuckled and said "I'm not trying to sign you up today, don't worry." It kept me on the phone. I didn't buy but I was impressed enough that if I had chosen to purchase a CDN service within the next little while I probably would have given them a second look.
I still don't like people phoning me, and I think there are far better ways to reach out to people, but everything that transpired within that phone call was an example of marketing done in the right direction.
I'm self-employed, running a high-traffic web-site that generates money via ad revenue for 11 years now, and the people who visit my web-site have no idea that the entire site is one giant advertisement; in fact, people have complimented and praised me for not having any ads on the site. And yet when fellow webmasters in the same industry as myself share their sales and conversion stats I always get a big smile on my face. Their sites are crawling with blatant advertisements and they need 2 to 5 times the traffic to generate the same revenue. I've never understood how pissing off your customers can be regarded as any form of business model.
I think the best well-known type of advertisement that's going in the right direction is product placement. It can be done poorly, yes and I know I am about to get a bunch of replies from people telling me that they always notice it and it ruins the program etc. But it *CAN* be done in a subtle way that blends with the program and does not detract, to the point where the viewer does not notice or care.
But I think the real way to do "advertising" is provide a value to the viewer as the advertisement itself. Imagine an hour long infomercial on television that was entertaining and/or informative enough to get you to watch it for it's own sake, with no intention of buying anything. Remember that "punch the monkey" ad that was on every single web-site a decade ago ? Imagine if that had actually been a real game that you could play. No pushy-ness what-ever. Not shoved in your face and not done as a banner / flash ad. Instead, something people genuinely wanted to play, with an entertaining sales pitch as part of it. Good advertising can be done, and occasionally is. We just don't notice because we're too distracted and pissed off at the "BOO!!! HAHAH! THIS IS ADVERTISEMENT! YOU WILL BUY NOW LOLZ!"
I've practiced "magic"/illusion-performance as a hobby for a few years and in reading/studying I've learned that corporations will often hire magicians at trade-shows to pitch new products to retailers. Some of the better magicians have crafted entire 20-minute magic routines around the product they're hired to pitch. It's entertainment and people want to watch it for that purpose alone, but it's also an advertisement.
Nearly all advertizements pay per impression (view) not per click these days. Ads primarily exist to leave an impression, not to get an immediate response. That is why passive advertizements existed long before there was a way to interact with them like you can on the internet.
So by not loading ads you are decreasing the site's revenue regardless of whether you would have clicked them or not.
It means you want to provide something for nothing. You want to run a website that costs money to operate, but you do not want to pay for it.
It's not stealing. It's not a crime. But it is childish and hypocritical.
"But I want them to see my content." waa, waa. The grown up, principled thing to do would be to stop expecting people to pay for your wants.
That's okay though. Everybody wants someone else to pay. But the old "I can't afford it" or "I'm providing a benefit, I shouldn't have to pay" or "my content is important, and a little ad or 2 saves having to restrict it to people who will pay me directly" is just unprincipled crap. Just admit you want to don't want to pay for your actions rather than coming up with ridiculous rationalizations.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
I never look at ads even when for some reason I'm using IE on someone else's computer. At home I run every ad blocker known to man.
So why wouldn't it be morally honest to block the ads because I refuse to look at them? Why should the advertiser be wrongly charged for an ad that nobody consumed?
Browsers allow you to block ads, because they are so extensible (plugins). But it is interesting to think about Apps.
It is easy to block ads from a website, but not so from the corresponding app. Apps are a complete bundle of features (some which you may like and some less), but you don't get to pick and choose and tweak as with browser.
Have you tried blocking ads on the Hulu website? You'll get to wait for about twice as long as if you watched the ad.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
That I pay for the bandwidth, so how dare they usurp and use it to serve ads. So I aggressively adblock.
I've almost got all of hulu's ad servers blotted out. And then for standard web browsing I use AdBlock Plus.
I block ads, but I leave the option to allow non-obtrusive advertising on.
I'll reward sites that promote responsible advertising, the rest of the ads can get bent.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
While I'm concerned about being tracked, the major reason I adblock is to avoid having annoying animated ads appear. My eyes are inexorably drawn to anything animated within my near field of view. If a site has any animation on it I have an extremely hard time concentrating on the content. So adblock is most helpful in helping avoid all maner of methods that advertisers use to try and capture your eyeball.
If there were some means of blocking any animated content while still allowing ads I would think seriously of using that. I want the sites that I rely on to earn money. I don't have a problem with advertisers using sites as a venue to get the word out about their product. But I do want to be able to read the sites I visit.
Honestly. Look at the agreement between you and them. You are providing eyeballs for a product. When they believe they can track you beyond your eyeballs, there is an issue. You don't HAVE to look at billboards as you drive by them. Why do they think they can throw a GPS tracking device on your car as you drive by? All business transactions are based on equal standing. Especially contract law. You need to be on equal footing for contracts to be honored. That is why some jurisdictions don't see Shrink Wrap EULAs as valid and enforceable. You have no equal footing with something that you already purchased and cannot return, since the package was opened.
When the equation is equal again, you can walk back and deal as an equal, until it is an equal equation, the only way to win is to not play.
Kobayashi Maru
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what is for dinner.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb.
AdBlock Plus just give us lambs better arms.
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
It's all about respect for the free will of the consumer.
If I want to look at ads, let me. If I want them out of my sight, so be it. It's my eyeballs you're trying to market, so you do so on my terms or not at all.
Seriously, nothing pisses me off more than popups or "forced ad views". They get between me and the content I seek to read.
Also, because I never click on ads anyway, it's a waste of CPU and screenspace to show them.
By blocking ads I'm actually saving the site on their bandwidth bills.
Ads should be clearly labeled as ads, stay the hell out of my way when I'm using a site, and if I'm to click on them they also need to be relevant to my interests.
If you want to profile me, and you're willing to respect my privacy, go for it. Pull any underhanded tricks and I'll ditch you so fast your head will spin.
There are browsers on Apple's AppStore that block ads. I use Atomic Web Browser on my iPhone and iPad. It has built in, configurable ad blocking.
Trolling is a art,
I'm sure 90% of people don't ad block anyway..
I don't do it.. I don't really like the idea.
I don't have any silly monthly transfer limits to worry about..
I know keeping a site online costs money.
Net ads don't bother me.. now totally un-targeted TV ads on the other hand....
If the anti-ad revolution starts, then that's probably when net neutrality goes away, and we say hello to subscription packages.
In regard to the advertisements themselves, I don't mind small text ads that DON'T track my browsing habits. They're easy to ignore that way. In practice, I block everything.
Pretty much this. I don't even mind small graphics, if they're hosted locally (on the website, not on 127.0.0.1). But no, that's not good enough for the advertising pricks. They want to build "behavior profiles" with web bugs, javascript trackers, and all sorts of other nasty little tricks.
Now they can profile me turning on Adblock, Noscript, and Ghostery.
But it is childish and hypocritical.
Not at all. I pay my ISP to get internet access. If that internet access gave me equal bandwidth both in upload and download capacity, and adhered to network neutrality, there would be no need to pay for anything else other than internet access. The internet didn't come about because of advertising, or commercial interests. It doesn't need either to sustain itself. Protocols could easily be designed to share content, just like bittorrent does now. Bittorrent doesn't need advertising, and it can move a lot of data. More than anything a typical webpage costs in bandwidth. If the concept was extended so that websites I access frequently I could sign up to cache their content and redistribute it on a network model like bittorrent, which was what the web was designed to do, albeit less efficiently, being a "version 1.0" -- then there would be little need for servers, data centers, advertising, etc.
This isn't a "something for nothing" argument, this is a "cooperation costs less than competition" argument. The internet was not designed as a client/server model: TCP/IP is a peer to peer protocol. It's the ultimate in electronic democracy... and corporations and commercial interests have been fighting it, beating on it, manipulating it, and fucking it up as much as possible to shoehorn their own outdated business models on it.
The internet not only doesn't need advertisements: It doesn't need advertising companies, servers, data centers, clouds, businesses, corporations, governments... it doesn't need any of that. We could, in fact, create a wireless global network based on internet protocols and do away with ISPs entirely, if we were so motivated.
So don't give me that "something for nothing" argument, because that's what they're doing. They're allowed to freeload on my internet connection to support their broken business model. If enough people block advertising, move away from ISPs that don't enforce network neutrality, and demand the government do something about it... we might actually get the network back that we originally designed, the network that is full of possibilities, open protocols, and universal access to all of humanities collective knowledge and experience.
Or... you can be a consumer and eat whatever they feed you.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The big problem with ads is that sites keep increasing the number of ads per page or per unit time until the number of users drops off substantially. CBS actually admitted that they cranked up the number of commercials on their on-line shows until the usage started to drop.
There are limits to this, as Myspace found out the hard way. At some point, users revolt and go elsewhere. Facebook seems to be following Myspace in that regard, as "sponsored stories" and larger ads chew up more of the screen. Google started with small blocks of ads on the right of search results, but now there are ads at the right, top, and bottom of search results.
As a counter to that, I did Ad LImiter, which is a reaction to Google and Bing putting too many ads and paid results on search results. You get to select how many ads you want to see per page. The default is 1. You can set it to zero, but one Google ad is often useful. Think of it as moderation, applied to advertisers.
I'd like to see more tools like that. It would induce advertisers to produce better, more relevant ads, if they were competing against other ads for some criterion beneficial to the user. Google selects the ads to show based on an algorithm designed to optimize Google's revenue. This is not necessarily optimal for either user or advertiser.
My default is to block or avoid all ads everywhere. I don't even have cable, and all of the TV I watch is either Netflix instant view or Torrent streams, so I never see any TV ads. I block all internet ads on all of my computers, plus my phone and tablet. About the only ads I see are on the radio while driving, mostly because I am too lazy and don't drive enough to bother with setting up audio CDs or getting satellite radio.
On the internet, at least on computers, I sometimes whilelist sites I like and want to support, if their ads aren't too obnoxious. At least if I bother to remember about it. For internet ads, there's so much bad stuff out there - malware in ads, tracking systems, javascript that slows your browser to a crawl, annoying animations, and just plain ugly stuff, that it's much easier to block it all and not worry than to try and sort out what's what.
For morality, I try to look at the situation in reverse to get a little perspective. How many internet advertising people are really worried about whether they infect our computers with malware, track us, slow our browsers to a crawl, etc? How much effort are they going to to make sure that those things don't happen? Yeah, I thought so. I think I'll continue to not care about any greater implications of being part of the 5% of internet users tech-savvy enough to block ads.
I don't reply to ACs
I don't mind sites showing advertisements
I mind when sites use ad servers that slow down my computer and/or mobile device because it tries to make a dozen calls to different servers to try and load in some complex advertisement..
Then I go to try and zoom in on the website's content and the advertisement shows up 1/2 cut off.. and the little "Close" button gets stuck off-screen.. So I lose not only the ability to read a content on a website, but am forced to see half of an advertisement without the ability to get past it....
Unless I block/avoid the advertisement.
I Love google ads, most of the other ads use obnoxious strategies to annoy me into reading their message
If I didn't the advertisers would be paying money to have ads delivered to me for products that I will never buy.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I too feel a twinge of guilt for freeloading with my ad-blocker in place. I rationalize it with the following:
1) I cannot control what types of ads are served to me and that puts me at risk of receiving malicious (potentially zero-day) javascript and flash ads. If ad networks had better quality control about what they served this would be less of an issue.
2) I cannot control the volume of ad traffic I receive vis-a-vis the flood of flash ads you get if you go to any major ad supported site without a blocker in place. This consumption of bandwidth and downloading of extra images perceptibly slows down page renders.
3) I mentally block ads out any way and wouldn't click on them if they weren't blocked.
4) If a site really wanted to force the issue they have means to withhold content if ads haven't been retrieved either by monitoring server accesses or DOM inspection. As it stands I just bail out on any site that takes too many tries to get it to render right with temporary white-listing through noscript.
I actually felt bad enough once to unblock /. only to find that I was "grandfathered" in and they wouldn't serve me ads any way.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
There are a handful of websites I go ahead and pay the full subscription fee to, which automatically removes all advertisement. (Or, like Slashdot, they allow you to turn off advertisements as a reward for good behavior.) If I don't visit enough to justify paying for my personal bandwidth costs, I have no qualms about keeping it adblocked. The ads are probably not being targeted to me anyway.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
It mystifies me that so many intelligent people are so wrong about where content comes from. I'm an online journalist. I've been an online journalist for 11 years. Advertising revenue is what pays the bills.
Blocking ads isn't immoral. It doesn't make you a bad person. But if everyone did it, a whole heck of a lot of websites wouldn't exist. This point stands regardless of what anyone thinks of my content or the content at websites I've written for. If you like a website because it publishes solid, well-researched articles, those articles take time and money to create. Good journalism takes time and money to create.
If you block ads and *don't* subscribe or cut a check every so often, than yes, that's a problem. There are stories that don't get written because investigating them is too costly. It sucks to be in a situation where you've got your hands on something interesting, but you literally can't afford to follow it up. Opting out of advertising has an impact on sites you care about.
And for the record? I hate ads, too.
if I had mod points today, I'd spend one to +1 this.
I've never understood the "information is free" mantra. It's simply based on false ideology from a perspective of one who hasn't thought about the implications of what they're saying all the way through to the end.
I block Javascript across the board, but all static images are allowed through. If your site displays the ads as static images that do not require any javascript then I'm fine with your ads and don't mind if I see them. I'm actually pretty shocked at how few ads I actually see given that plain old images are allowed.
I'm not the kind of person who is persuaded by ads. If and when I want something I go looking for it. So I block all ads as they are stupid to me.
I don't think you can even block them. I consider them respectful of the reader. I suspect that many feel the same and text ads may be the smart way to go. And, yes, many sites need ads to be able to offer useful content- support them when you can.
But put animated images or sounds on my screen and they'll be out in a Flash. In fact the entire site might be gone. I don't care if it's advertising for others or a promo for the site itself- if it can't sit still I shut it down. And if there is no provision offered to stop the animation I'll probably leave the site forever.
Sadly this often includes government and major business sites. Leave that noise (visual or aural) to the Disney kids; the gambling, porn, sports and entertainment sites. There's no place in business for noise.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The alternative would be something like the BBC, where I'd have to pay $230 a year to watch NBC. $230 a year to watch ABC. $230 a year to watch CBS. And on and on and on.
No the BBC model is far better than that: you pay £145.50 each year to watch the BBC. This consists of multiple channels of high quality HD content plus an online service that lets you download content to watch offline later. You then get ITV, Channel 4 etc. thrown in for free with ads.
If they would let me do that from Canada I'd take them up in a flash. As it is my only option for anything close is to pay $880 (~£550) per year for cable to get the same amount of quality content split over 100 channels and interspersed with ads and low quality rubbish. The only channel that comes close in terms of quality is the CBC but it only provides one english-speaking channel and is severely hampered by lack of funding.
The BBC is by no means perfect and the funding model certainly has its flaws but the end result is something with a higher quality and lower cost than anything I have yet seen in any of the countries I've lived in.
The internet didn't come about because of advertising, or commercial interests. It doesn't need either to sustain itself. Protocols could easily be designed to share content, just like bittorrent does now. Bittorrent doesn't need advertising, and it can move a lot of data
BitTorrent is a actually a terrible way to distribute data. It works because it decentralises the COST of the data distribution - instead of a data centre or website absorbing it, it is (largely) democratised amongst all the peers who absorb the cost by paying their ISP.
From a network model is sort of sucks, because you 10 people on the same ISP downloading the same file will all download 10 copies of the the file from a variety of different sources.
Your next point about distributing content:
I could sign up to cache their content and redistribute it on a network model like bittorrent, which was what the web was designed to do, albeit less efficiently, being a "version 1.0" -- then there would be little need for servers, data centers, advertising, etc.
.... is exactly what ISPs have been doing for years with things like their local mirrors of Linux distributions. That way the ISP saves money - because those 10 copies of the same file is reduced to downloading one copy. BitTorrent won't really offer this, unless the ISP is seeding random torrents all over the place.
But you end up needing MORE data centres, because you have to have infrastructure at every point to cache this data as close to a large volume of end users.
The internet not only doesn't need advertisements: It doesn't need advertising companies, servers, data centers, clouds, businesses, corporations, governments... it doesn't need any of that. We could, in fact, create a wireless global network based on internet protocols and do away with ISPs entirely, if we were so motivated.
So 10 years ago we started a website to provide fast local downloads of gaming files to Australians. We are a long way away from everyone else, and 10+ years ago we were even further away. Having a few thousand Australians trying to pull large gaming files over the Pacific was causing a lot of grief. ISPs weren't really keen to pay for that stuff at the time, so we were able to do it, fortunately sponsored so we could absorb the (ludicrous) costs.
Eventually our sponsorship dried up and we resorted to ads. The ads meant we could continue providing the service FOR FREE, without having to ask users for any money. All they had to do was spend a few nanoseconds of consciousness absorbing ad information and we could go on providing this invaluable service for Aussies who wanted the latest gaming files, quickly and reliably.
Advertising provides a model for things like this to actually exist. The only alternative is to actually take money from the users to pay for it. Ads keep websites free.
A wireless global IP network ? I am not sure if you play video games, but all the guys I know, including myself, shudder at the thought of using such a network for gaming.
So don't give me that "something for nothing" argument, because that's what they're doing. They're allowed to freeload on my internet connection to support their broken business model. If enough people block advertising, move away from ISPs that don't enforce network neutrality, and demand the government do something about it...
I've made this point elsewhere in this thread, but there are two parties paying for bandwidth when you go to a website. You're paying for your end, and they're paying for their end. They're not "freeloading on your Internet connection" any more than you are freeloading on theirs. The difference is they're doing it in good faith that in return for connecting you to their content (which they not only pay the bandwidth for, but the server time to service your request, the costs of having a human being put it online, and all the overhead of running the business that allows it all to happen), you will spend a fraction of time absorbing the ad that they're putting in front of you.
Really? People are still debating this? I run pixelserv on my router, and I haven't seen an ad in... I can't remember. http://www.howtogeek.com/51477/how-to-remove-advertisements-with-pixelserv-on-dd-wrt/ Also, I pay for bandwidth. Why would I accept "POSTAGE DUE" on the junk mail in my mailbox?
Back in the 50's, America's highways started filling up with billboards. There was a huge backlash and laws in many places to ban the billboards so that people can enjoy the scenery. Over time, the advertisers bought and bribed their way to the situation that we have now, where you can't drive anywhere without being inundated with billboard advertising. It is no less evil now then it was then, just along the way people forgot that they do NOT have to look at advertising every minute of the day. When the internet went to a basically advertising model, few complained, and no one tried to enact laws to stop it. We should have. There is no reason to be forced to see advertising, unless you are actually looking for it, like the food section in the local paper. Luckily we have adblock, which will work for now. Use it everywhere you can, and enjoy the scenery, while you can.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Chrome (and I assume other browsers do this too) lets me block flash, and whitelist it for sites that I always want it to display on, like youtube. That gets rid of the most obnoxious ads. I can tolerate banner images just fine, though I don't seem to get targeted with flashing banners very often, like many people claim to.
Advertising on the basic level for me is a waste of my previous time on earth. Need to scroll past an advert ? Waste my time. Pause on TV ? Waste my time. Pop up I must close ? Waste my time. Spam or marketing in email ? waste my time. Need to turn a page because an advert is cutting an article in a paper magazine ? Waste my time. Telephone call from marketeer ? Waste my time. Spam in my snail mail box ? Waste a few precious second to go to the paper trash.
I am exagerating you say ? As single action All those do not taker much, some are 1/10 of seconds some a few seconds. But put all those seconds together, and consider how many hours of your life they will make you lose. Advertiser are evil. They probably "kill" enough people as big as a small country every year by the time wasted put together.
Do not tell me there is a good advertising. There is none. I do not want it. I will have at best a few more decades on earth if I am very lucky. I do not want to waste it with Bullshit from marketing people. Heck If I could ad block and skip ad for TV, Snail Mail, and the other media I put above I would do it. Sadly it works only for the internet. Praise to the adblock plus author, alleluja, may he live 100 years and get a saint statue.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Saying that it's ok to use the government to limit speech is evil, whether it's commercial speech or not. Using technology to block annoying people from speaking to you is just fine, even if that technology is a third-party service. Using technology to block technically bad advertising systems is not just fine, it's really nice!
I started running ad-blockers because too many ads were [BLINK]annoying animated gifs[/BLINK], which have since mutated into resource-burning browser-crashing Flash and Javascript ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, float-around-thingies, and other annoyances YELLING FOR MY ATTENTION. I'm not very bothered by Google text ads or even low volumes of non-singing non-dancing static image ads, but there's no obvious convenient way to block the annoying ones without blocking the well-behaved ones. (Sorry, Google, but I'm not going to bother using non-obvious non-convenient tools just to enable ads, even for sites I like.)
I also run ad-blockers and Ghostery because there's too much tracking going on. I don't want lots of random measurement systems watching everything I could do and deciding how they can monetize my user experience by selling tracking data to people who want to show me ads. If your web page wants to run trackers in your domain, fine, but leave the third-party stuff out of it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. How do you propose to run something like that on a "wireless global network," and without bourgeois indulgences like "servers" or "data centers"? Is your plan, if you have one, within reach of YouTube's 800 million monthly visitors? Or are mere "consumers" not invited to your ARPANET?
Even pending your apparently forthcoming dissolution of the FCC, that "network we originally designed, full of possibilities" still exists. All of those open protocols are still there for you to use--and mere banner ads do nothing to stop you or anyone else from using them.
But, instead of practicing what you preach, you're here posting on Slashdot. You're using their bandwidth just as much as they are yours. You proudly view no ads, and you're not a subscriber. You'll sit and listen, but won't throw any change into the hat.
I normally enjoy reading your posts, but Massysett is right. If anyone here is a "freeloader," it's you. Blocking ads isn't stealing, and it's not a crime, but it is childish and hypocritical. And it seems the mods are every bit as good at rationalizing this particular tragedy of the commons as you are.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Rather than whitelist, I choose to blacklist - and I do so very discriminately.
/. - your advertisers have been blacklisted for bad behaviour. I don't bother to tick the box, as they're already blocked.
In essence, I allow a website's ads to stream freely until they stream an ad that offends me. As soon as that happens, I adblock them.
I figure that this introduces a kind of moral/ethical gate in advertising. As long as the advertisers conduct themselves ethically, I will allow them space on my (browser) desktop. If an advertiser is unethical, they lose that right. Now, its up to them...
Bad news for
BitTorrent is a actually a terrible way to distribute data. It works because it decentralises the COST of the data distribution - instead of a data centre or website absorbing it, it is (largely) democratised amongst all the peers who absorb the cost by paying their ISP.
It does what it was designed to do: Namely to decentralize data distribution, which defrays costs to the point where it is affordable to all the participants. It may not be the best protocol, or best method of doing it, but it works surprisingly well for its simplicity.
From a network model is sort of sucks, because you 10 people on the same ISP downloading the same file will all download 10 copies of the the file from a variety of different sources.
Not a terribly convincing argument. Conventional web-based downloads do the same thing: How effective is caching, overall, as part of aggregate data usage for all files exceeding, say, 5 MB? You're down to single digit percentages there. You aren't really saving much bandwidth, except in very specialized circumstances like, say, windows update.
But you end up needing MORE data centres, because you have to have infrastructure at every point to cache this data as close to a large volume of end users.
It also requires the users sacrifice their privacy in the name of network optimization.
So 10 years ago we started a website to...
Your solution here is a bandaid to begin with: You're admitting there was inadequate bandwidth on the physical links, but rather than save up to upgrade them, you blame the gamers. Caching can't fix your problem, only new physical media can.
Eventually our sponsorship dried up and we resorted to ads. The ads meant we could continue providing the service FOR FREE, without having to ask users for any money. All they had to do was...
And obviously their wallets didn't come right out, because to them, the service being provided wasn't valuable enough. That's why the project was defunded. Advertising at this point was an attempt to waylay market forces which were clearly saying "This is not needed anymore."
t. The only alternative is to actually take money from the users to pay for it.
There was another alternative -- otherwise the funding wouldn't have dried up. The alternative in this case was... Australia ponied up the cash for faster transatlantic links. Whether the money comes from the government, a corporation, a collection of corporations, or private citizens, doesn't really matter. Advertising did not provide sufficient cashflow to provide a real solution, only keep a bandaid one on life support for a little longer.
The difference is they're doing it in good faith that in return for connecting you to their content (which they not only pay the bandwidth for, but the server time to service your request, the costs of having a human being put it online, and all the overhead of running the business that allows it all to happen), you will spend a fraction of time absorbing the ad that they're putting in front of you.
There are alternatives. I laid out in some detail in my previous post what an alternative might look like. You didn't come right out and say that it's a bad idea because you can't. It's how the internet used to work. Fundamentally, it's still how it works today despite decades upon decades of governments, corporations, and committees doing everything possible to control and manipulate it into being something else.
Your argument reduces to an appeal to popularity: "Everybody else does it, so it must be right." You haven't even acknowledged the notion that there might be another way to organize computational resources, either because you can't figure out how to do it and have thus concluded it can't be done (which is pretty arrogant), or you have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Your reference to your apparently failing project you poured sweat and tears into seems to indicate at least the latter of the two.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
we might actually get the network back that we originally designed, the network that is full of possibilities, open protocols, and universal access to all of humanities collective knowledge and experience.
And porn! The internet is for porn.
I don't mind animated GIFs, but Flash goes several steps to far. I draw the line at executing code provided by them. Period. If you want to reach me, use animated GIFs or text.
Try the box that says "Thank you for contributing, your ads are disabled". It's non-money contribution in the form of posts that are rated highly as User-Generated-Content. That's one way. What the poster next to me is saying that for once instead of TV where we got ads shoved at us, these companies have to get *just a little smarter*.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Actually, you just stumbled on a rough draft of the answer.
"Random measurement systems, hmm?"
So if I had a list per advertiser per webpage with footnotes per executive and per employee, in my choice of PDF or other formats, I'd turn advertising for that agency and that page on. Oh wait, that's what they collect on *us*. Silly me to think we "deserve" that on them!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Careful there, you're almost heading into the discussion topic of entertainment vs the **AA.
How are you ever going to hear about a band like Cube To The Third? (Ultra Small Indie Project that (used to be?) in my area.)
If you then found it through this post, that's Word Of Mouth Advertising. I absolutely you would never ever have heard of it otherwise. You'll just have to take my word for it I'm no shill, it was a random example of an obscure indie band.
Advertising *does* have a function but it's SO abusable that consumers took a little power back in their own hands and now this story is about some-strange-aggregated-collection-of-LittleGuys-and-advertisers getting upset that this isn't TV.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
>> unwritten Terms and Conditions
There is no such thing.
aaaaaaa
Personally i only block ads which i find obnoxious...
Any popups
Excessive animation
Any sound
Forced unskippable video watching
Pointless ads, eg advertising something that i cannot (legally) obtain because of where i live
If ads are unintrusive, i have no problem with them
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Disable Advertising is turned off and so is my ad blocker.
Mainly because I support the site and because they give me the the choice to see the ads and the ads are not that intrusive.
Privacy is terrorism.
Most of the valuable content on the internet is at places with not enough traffic to be supported by ads anyway. If there's a donation button at such sites or some kind of micropayment (through SMS for instance) and I've used the content, I will pay.
Me watching advertisements is the same as me not watching advertisements, because I do not base my decisions on marketing. And if they count on some subconsious influence on me -- let them fuck off.
I also create content that is valuable for some people. One of my sites which has no ads and where donation link was clicked exactly one time in years has about 200 visitors each day. If they use my work, why wouldn't I use work of others.
I never click on adds, so can I disable them ? I know that sites get dollars from clicks but what if I never click an add ? /. add. /. bandwidth costs ?
Sure I may click on a comment link if I'm reading a story but I'd probably never click on a
Given I'd never click, am I not saving
Ok, not me, but as a collective. all of us that don't click, and on all other sites, must as a collective to that site. add up to some bandwidth savings.
Anyone that responds with a 'unconscious telepathic imprint' of me seeing response the add can go away.
I already know that stuff is cheaper to buy over seas, and yes i may or may not do that already.
Point is, I know what I need, and I'll google for anything else. Adds don't prompt me, and if they did (which they don't cause of adblock) I'll Google it for an honest opinion.
if
Yes, just like browsing through Linx is stealing.
Or browsing with NoScript.
Or browsing without Flash or Javascript.
Or getting up and making a sandwich during the commercial break.
I think there's a good reason you posted this as AC.
It means you want something for nothing. You want to look at websites that cost money to operate, but you do not want to support them.
It's not stealing. It's not a crime. But it is childish and hypocritical.
It would only hypocritical if we also demanded those same sites to keep running forever. While many owners of popular websites might hate to hear it, there are actually very, very few places that offer something that'd justify the cost. And the reason is simple - the Net is so huge by now that, for most useful things that are not inherently expensive, someone else is already offering it for free. So if someone starts charging for things (or - as a rough equivalent - pushing through ads that defeat blockers), people just move elsewhere. They don't care about what it costs to operate, they care about what they can get for the same price elsewhere - that's free market for you, supply and demand.
As a website operator, you can't compete with that. You either accept the rules and work with them to your advantage, if possible, or if not then you move on to some other venture where the rules are such that you can make profit there. Whining about adblock ruining your business is childish, though. You might as well whine about people not paying you for all the gossip you spread around; after all, that took so much time and effort to collect, and it's clearly a useful service!
This is very significant, too bad I don't have mod points.
Still, it somehow opens the way to thinking these ads I block would have been for products I don't buy...
So it may allow me dreaming that's Coca-cola drinkers paying for this site while I don't drink coca...
Herve S.
I don't see the moral problem here. Do most of the readers hate banner ads? Yup, they do. Ads that don't evoke sympathy are not effective anyway. There are tons of other ways that are not obtrusive: modified article headers ("sponsored by"), dedicated article boxes, hell, even "click to continue" stopper pages - and the content pages can remain clean.
There are alternatives. I laid out in some detail in my previous post what an alternative might look like.
I must have missed that. Your alternative seems to be some combination of: get rid of ads, abolish data centres, use BitTorrent, get government to fix it, democratise everything.
Oh, and instead of solve problems of bandwidth by caching and clever software, upgrade the international links coming into Australia. I can't remember why we didn't think of doing that at the time, but we probably had a good reason.
The fact is that advertising works, and on-line advertising works best. It's true that for some people, constant bombardment through on-line ads detracts from brand perception, so you probably don't mind that those people block your ads. From a business perspective you want to reach each person just the right amount, and they will certainly play a role in deciding what the amount is.
If its privacy, not security, you are concerned about then enter "Private Browsing" or "Incognito" mode to access that site with JS and all turned on. Then nothing in your cookies, cache or history can be connected with your other browsing (for which you may want to use the blocking extensions). At that point, they will have little more than an IP address as a commonality.
To make this approach even more effective, in both modes use an add-in that manages your browser 'fingerprint' such as FireGloves.
I don't bother to block benign ads. But I do block abusive ads, such as flash animated GIFs, and 1x1 transparent trackers. My method of blocking is by using DNS to substitute my own IP address, which goes to a web server instance that always delivers my own 1x1 transparent image which does not track myself. Of course this does mean that by serving even ONE abusive ad, the entire server gets blocked. Ad serving companies need to check their content. Detecting the animated GIFs should be easy to do by automation.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Many sites can survive if the level of traffic is what was happening before the internet became public. Now "great sites" are bombarded by so much traffic that the person running it can no longer pay for all that bandwidth on their leftover beer money. The only other option is paid access. Is that what you want?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You visiting a website is 100% opt in.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
"If you work in advertising, kill yourself. No, seriously; kill yourself. No, seriously; kill. your. self."
If you want to "support" something, buy it.
It's a market, not a cooperative or a charity or a football team. If you buy something, that's all the support they want.
If you don't buy the thing, black ads or don't block ads, as you wish. It is not an issue of ethics.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I say "profile away". I would rather see ads for geek toys and software than ads for stories about Brit-Brit and coach bags and other nonsense.
I am very confident in the fact that no company is going to advertise it's way into my wallet. I do my own research on products before I buy anything, and the most an ad would ever do is make me aware of a product I did not know existed (which IMO is a good thing and is the purpose of ads). If other sheeple can't control their own spending and get brainwashed into buying things they don't want or need, then a) that is not my problem, and b) me running adblock on my own machine is not going to stop that.
I only block ads for two reasons:
1. The ads are particularly obnoxious. I really despise the in-text ads that pop up when you mouse over a particular word in the text, for instance.
2. I despise the website's business model. The Huffington Post, for example, makes millions of dollars but doesn't pay most of its bloggers a cent. Sometimes there's good content there, so I'll only click through if I have an adblocker enabled for the site.
But for other sites I usually let the ads load. From time to time I'll even click the ads just to support the website, if it's a website I like. I almost never see an ad I'm actually interested in, however.
I've been using adblock on Firefox since it first became available. There's no way I'm going to subject myself to the visual assault of endless advertisements around the web. I'm paying for that bandwidth with my internet connection fees and feel no responsibility whatsoever to support their advertising activities with my money. Whenever I use a machine without Adblock installed I'm always amazed at how much garbage clutters up many web sites I normally visit. I've seen statistics that estimate that the average American is subjected to over 3000 ads a day in one form or another. I know that can vary considerably but I refuse to allow any more into my life than is necessary. Does that bother someone running a web site somewhere? Too bad. Basically, I. Don't. Care.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
I Adblock everything, but whitelist the sites I support. Is this too much? Not enough?
Dunno, but seems like exactly what I'm doing. Keep on going and don't waste too much time worrying about this.
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
I actually -do- read all the billboards I happen to see. Not because I stop - just because they're there, they have words on them, therefore, I read them. I have no problem with it, either. Sometimes I even see advertising for things (usually movies) that seem interesting, but that I wouldn't have heard of otherwise (since I do block out most other forms of advertising, because they -do- waste my time), and that I then go look up.
I have no problem with advertising per se, only with advertising that wastes my time. Advertising on busses or billboards don't at all.
Website advertising, on the other hand, is frequently obnoxious, and often the cause of pages loading way slower. So screw them all, I adblock everything except on a couple sites. And only a couple. And if they let even one obnoxious or nonfunctional ad through, they're back on the list.
Try the box that says "Thank you for contributing, your ads are disabled". It's non-money contribution in the form of posts that are rated highly as User-Generated-Content. That's one way. What the poster next to me is saying that for once instead of TV where we got ads shoved at us, these companies have to get *just a little smarter*.
That box works because Slashdot knows that the users that contribute help bring in more users, so they reward them by turning off ads. But just because a site provides some users the option to turn off ads to reward their contributions doesn't mean that the site can survive if all users blocked ads.
I have that box, but I chose not to click it. I like Slashdot and want to support them, but I don't want to give them my own money, so I let the advertisers pay them.
Lots of websites use project wonderful actually... So you're wrong about the pay per view.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Apart from the visual clutter that advertising produces, which I find distracting, the cpu load from flash and animated or script-enabled ads is simply not worth the performance impact that it has on my (fairly new, modern) machines. This applies to both laptops, where there is also an impact on battery life, as well as desktops. I don't say this out of speculation; anyone with a small computer with a fan that responds to cpu load can verify it on their own, and I have also measured the effect of turning on various levels of ad-blocking on cpu and disk I/O real-time when making my decisions. Overall, my message to advertisers is: less is more. If you stray too far into technologies that consume resources on the user side of the equation, you will be blocked.
I'm bombarded by advertisements every which way I turn. I can't even enjoy the horizon without some gigantic billboard for divorce lawyers ruining the view. I don't think it's so much to ask that I have one outlet that's ad free.
For a long time I didn't use ad blocking. Then one day while trying to research a technical issue, I ran into the worst "Punch the Monkey" variant ever. The idea was a ninja warrior with mystic powers was hurling throwing starts at you. The artwork reminded me of Word Ware II era anti-Japanese propaganda. To add to the horror, it was an animated advertisement in Flash. The sound played by this advertisement can only be described as the result of piping the Windows kernel into your audio device mixed with the sound of bunnies in a blender (if you've ever heard the scream of a terrified rabbit you'd understand). The creators of this monstrosity put it into an infinite loop and disabled the control in Flash player for stopping the thing. The only menu option available was "About Flash Player." To make matters worse, I was blasting some excellent classic rock MP3s out of my speakers when this loaded, so the awful sound of this advertisement was turned up to 11.
And that is the day I installed ad blocking, never to turn it off again. If the advertising industry adopted a code of conduct so that something like this never again appeared in any medium I would consider removing Ad Block Plus. Since that isn't going to happen, my sincere apologies to any Web sites that rely on advertising revenue.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
I think what sours a lot of people is
a) Obtrusive ads (flashing, popover, etc)
b) Repeated ads (repetition of the same crap over and over)
c) Untargetted ads (not related to the interests of the viewer)
d) Dangerous ads (malware-related spew from third-party ad-vendors)
At the least, most sites should be able to get rid of (c). Slashdot does had ads with neat stuff from ThinkGeek, for example, which might appeal to the viewers. NOBODY needs (a) or (d), and some variety would be nice for (b).
Personally, I use noscript/etc mainly to do with (d). Sites that have shite javascripts or flash that slow/lock up my browser, ads that try and force popups or redirects on me, or even ones that try to serve malware.
"YOUR PC IS INFECTED WITH A VIRUS"
One doesn't have to see that shit with noscript. If sites were more scrupulous about their ad networks, perhaps they wouldn't get blocked.
I'd be interested in seeing what your site looks like. Perhaps you'd care to share (in public or PM)?
Sounds like it might be a feedback forum of sorts, or just something with good product placement?
I read many comments and I didn't see one addressing the main point: for the kind of person who is by nature extremely aggressive about making informed purchasing decisions viewing any advertisement (however innocuous) is a dominated outcome. It doesn't benefit the advertiser, since it doesn't influence your future purchasing behaviour, and to the degree the viewer's brain even notices it on your screen, the viewer's brain has absorbed useless and irrelevant information. Is what we put into our minds less harmless than what we put into our bodies? I wouldn't be too quick to judge.
Well, the advertiser wants everyone to view the ads anyway, even in the individual cases where the viewer won't respond. Why? They'll say ads influence people below their conscious threshold. This is true, of course. But this still doesn't profit the advertiser unless subconscious influences manifest themselves in purchasing decisions. If your purchasing style is aggressively analytic, there isn't much soil for this weed to grow.
No, the real battle is over the group of people who are presently engaged in passive consumption (with an impulsive component influenced by ad impressions) who might decide it is greener on the other side of the fence if they put their impulsive ways behind them. No ads! That would make the grass look greener, wouldn't it. So they want people who aren't influenced by ads to be subjected to ads so that people who are influenced by ads don't change their stripes.
This is similar to the game theory matrix in the tobacco wars: the tobacco industry wished to impose upon people inhaling second hand smoke to just sit there and suck it up. We receive no benefit from doing so: it smells bad, it makes our clothes smell bad, we don't get a high, and maybe it kills us. Nice deal. But to have the non-smokers sitting in the pubs sucking it up has a psychological spin-off in helping the smokers committing slow (and expensive) suicide continue to do so.
I admit there is some information conveyed to the rational consumer by an expensive ad campaign. Either A) the company really believes they have a compelling product, or B) the company's price structure builds in extremely fat margins.
I've learned that the aggregate cost of discrimination between these two signals (one negative, one positive) greatly exceeds the value of the information I ultimately obtain having gone to the trouble.
If you're the kind of person who believes that true capitalism is based on information parity in rational transactions (and you have the mental capacity to step up to the plate) there's almost no way to construct the game-theoretic matrix where not using an ad-blocker is a sane decision.
i adblock everything because:
a) ads annoy the hell out of me
b) it's a side effect of blocking javascript etc by default - i don't want web sites (especially advertising networks) running arbitrary code on my computer - spying on me and potentially installing trojans or other malware. I just want to view data, not run malware.
c) when i want to buy something, i go looking for it and dont want to be pestered about buying stuff otherwise. i loathe, detest, and resent being badgered by advertising. i just don't fucking want to know about it, hear about it, see it.
d) i never buy anything because of an ad.
e) in fact because of a and c above, the only affect seeing an ad is likely to have on me is to cause me to boycott the product and/or the company selling it if the ad is sufficiently annoying (and i have a fairly low threshold for being annoyed by the cretinously inane vulgarities that advertising scumbags think are clever or funny. i particularly despise ads that attempt to use soft porn to entice me to buy their worthless shit - i have nothing against porn in general, i just hate the cheap and nasty manipulation of using it in ads or marketing).
really, a pair of tits or whatever is not going to make me think your product is worth buying. it's going to make me think you're a manipulative scumbag.
I hate "branding" ads almost as much as porn ads - the ones that don't even mention a product but just do their best to engender feelings of loathing and contempt for the company/industry or whatever it is they're spamming. at least, that's how they work on me.
f) since advertising is predominantly pay-per-click and not pay-per-view my viewing ads is never going to generate any kind of revenue for the sites i visit.
g) OTOH for sites i actively participate in, my presence indirectly generates revenue because of all the other users who choose to view ads (for whatever reason - incomprehensible to me) that read the content i contribute. but that's not something i really care about. it's merely a co-incidence or a side-effect, not a reason.
h) i would rather not visit a site at all if there were some technical mechanism or annoyance (like interstitial ads) that attempted to force them on me. it's not like web sites are rare - there's millions of sites on the net and not one of them is worth being badgered by advertising for.
i) i don't watch TV much either and when I do, I mostly watch the non-commercial channels (ABC and SBS here in .au) because most of the shows on commercial channels are just hollywood style shit and other american cultural imperialism. The few shows I do like to watch on commercial TV I record with mythtv and skip the ads because, as i mentioned, I hate ads, they annoy the hell out of me.
mythtv also allows me to ignore TV for weeks or months at a time and then binge on watching TV for a few days (perhaps an entire season of a show). then i ignore it again for weeks.
j) my life is a lot more pleasant without the constant barrage of advertising noise.
Many of the ads that I see make me *hate* the vendor. Before seeing the ad, I would have been fine buying from them. After, I avoid them like the plague, tell my social circle about why their ad made me dislike them, start a boycott, or maybe just leave flaming bags of doggy doo on their front steps. So by blocking ads, I'm actually boosting the vendor's sales. They should be paying *me* to block their ads.
In reality, the above is a bit silly. In most situations, the ads that drive me nuts are for products/services that I (and most in my social circle) would have never bought anyway, and the advertisers know that. The very things that make the ad so annoying to me are precisely what makes it effective on the actual target demographic.
For example, I was watching TV with some extended family when one of those supremely annoying used car dealership commercials came on, with the "M-M-M-Monster Sale! Friday! FRIDAY! Fri-day! We're going craaazy!" and some family members said something to the effect of "Sounds like a great sale! We should seriously get down there!" I was shocked.
Daniel
I didn't care much about it until the ads started being animated, with sound, and in some cases you cant turn off either the video or the sound without muting your speakers. Then there came the ones that after you paused them would restart themselves in a few seconds, to give you time to scroll away from it. Because surely you turned it off in error?
Never bought anything because of an ad, never felt better about someone that I know sucks because of an ad, I just buy what looks good, at a good price, when I need it. Do most of my shopping at Costco where a giant team of experts has winnowed down my choices to the best, they take everything back for any reason, and I have very few customer service issues. If Costco doesn't have it, I buy 5 star items that are heavily reviewed at Amazon. Not perfect, but its a pretty good indicator, and they'll also take anything back.
I do wish many companies would take their advertising budget and plow it into customer service. I'm pretty sure outfits like directv, comcast, at&t and verizon who spend a gazillion dollars advertising and giving new customer discounts wouldn't need to bring in new customers as much if their customer service didn't suck dead donkey balls. Really dead, really big donkey balls.
Its a pity to see such great creativity used to both amuse and annoy someone. As for getting information on new products, services and offers text only adds are an excellent solution, there should be an opt-in checker for something like it. But please don't follow me and build my profile on what I like or liked at any phase in my life and also I do not support gmail reading my mails to give text only adds.
I don't want the internet to exist as a cloud of narcissistic driven blogs and opinions, I need pages with objective data and editorial content. I don't want to pay for that, that's why I need ads. Even the Adblock-Guy begs for money after installation to feed his family. Did you pay him or have you also stolen his working power?