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Editor-in-Chief of the Next Web: Adblockers Are Immoral
lemur3 writes: Hot on the heels of the recent implementation of Canvas Ads (allowing advertisers to use the full page) Martin Bryant, the Editor-in-Chief of The Next Web, wrote a piece that, ostensibly, calls out mobile carriers in Europe for offering ad blocking as a service. He writes: "Display ads are still an important bread-and-butter income stream. Taking delight in denying publishers that revenue shows either sociopathic tendencies or ignorance of economic realities." While referring to those using ad blocking as sociopathic is likely not to win many fans, this mindset seems to be prevalent in certain circles, as discussed previously on Slashdot. Martin closes his piece with a warning: "For all their sins, ads fuel much of the Web. Cut them out and you're strangling the diversity of online voices and publishers – and I don't think consumers really want that."
No. I will not risk the safety and security of my systems by allowing them to display potentially (frequently) harmful ads. Also I don't like being advertised to in general and fuck you anyways.
Shut the fuck up or join Adblock Plus' unobtrusive ads program.
Examples include ads that occupy the entire page, video ads that automatically play and hog mobile data, or broken/inoperable links to ad servers that prevent access to content.
Make ads unobtrusive (think about the way Google delivers ads), and customers won't block them.
are the reason i started using ad blockers, i will continue to do so until i'm confident the web has removed 100% of these
and I'll keep blocking your ads.
Ad networks have lately been the largest vector for remote exploits. Some very ordinary and mainstream websites have been using ad networks that offer up images/flash with embedded exploits. I will block all ad networks due to this. You want to provide ads? Download the ads locally, vet and display them from your own server like we used to do in the good ol' days of the web. Then I can't block them.
Using an ad network as a webmaster is laziness and immoral.
"For all their sins, ads fuel much of the Web. Cut them out and you're strangling the diversity of online voices and publishers – and I don't think consumers really want that."
So for all their sins, which include abuses such as embedding malware, unlawful tracking and spying as well as browse hijacking, plus the sheer annoyance of embedded video and flashing content -- the users who have opted out by installing Ad Blockers are the immoral ones. Then again -- rapists often blame their victims.
Ad blockers would not have been necessary if we didn't have ad networks distributing malware.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The war began in earnest when ads became intrusive and disruptive.
I appreciate that someone has to pay for all of the sites that I visit for free. Some are payed entirely out of pocket, a labor of love by the host. And some are fueled by ad revenue. But those that utilize pop-ups, pop-unders, full screen ads, ads that autoplay voice and sound, malicious ads with fake security warnings and fake buttons... I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about denying ad revenue to those sites.
Agreed.
I remember the first usenet spam, long before the web existed. I also remember the 10 years before that spam, when the internet was ad-free.
It was much better. I'd like to return to those days. So if this clown and all his "ad-fueled click-bait" content were to up and disappear tomorrow, I would not shed a tear. The actual useful content will continue to exist. I'm even willing to directly kick a few dollars to my favorite small-time interest-specific sites I read.
But ads and the masses of "here's page 1, click through our 200 word story spread out over the next 50 pages to bump our page impressions" shit? No. They need to die.
In addition I want the concept of ad revenue generated content to die.
Slashdot is advertising-supported, and I can see that you aren't posting from a subscriber account. Would you prefer that Slashdot operated like Something Awful, requiring payment up front to see anything past the front page? If you read an article on 20 different web sites, good luck paying for 20 different $5 per month subscriptions.
For many years, I didn't block ads, viewing them as a necessary part of all the free content on the internet. But starting with pages of animated ads that really slowed down browsers of old, and progressing to ads that play audio by default, ads that play video (with audio!) on even a momentary mouseover, etc.,, not to mention ads containing or linking to malicious content, I have no choice but to block them.
I hate ads, I use an ad blocker, but I'm posting because so far all of the comments have chastised sites for using ads, without providing an alternative.
The summary has some truth when it says, "for all their sins, ads fuel much of the Web". It costs real money to host a website, it costs real money to run a website, it costs real money to produce the content for a website.
So my question to all of those infuriated by those content producers who would "dare" to try to protect their ads is this: what viable alternative do you suggest? Ads work because (a) they generate revenue to cover all of those costs and (b) they don't require any sort of opt-in, and (c) apart from a few places where they are overdone, they generally don't get in the way of the content you're seeking.
(a) is what helps the bulk of websites you frequent stay afloat, (b) is important because the websites don't have to spend considerable resources trying to get you to enter into some sort of financial arrangement with them, and (c) provides a bit of a standard so that a marketplace of ad buyers and sellers can exist.
So again, if we were to get rid of ads, what would we replace them with? Paywalled sites don't get much love on /. so if that's your answer, I'd love to hear how you'd make them tolerable and how you'd get people to sign up.
I hate ads, and I use an ad blocker, but I do so knowing full well I'm being somewhat of a hypocrite and that I'm also relying on the vast majority of people /not/ using an ad blocker, because if a lot more people starting using them then the economics for most websites would fall apart. I don't like ads, but I have to admit that in many ways they seem like the least bad option. It's seems that many people who scream about their "right" to not have ads are being disingenuous or ignorant or both.
I'm even willing to directly kick a few dollars to my favorite small-time interest-specific sites I read.
If anti-ad sentiment grows, you'll end up having to create an account and "directly kick a few dollars" for a month's subscription to read the full text of even one article whose abstract you found through a search engine. Look at newspapers' trends toward making more money from the paywall than they had from advertisers, look at major scholarly journal publishers that continue to resist open access, and look at musicians pulling their recordings off Spotify in favor of subscription-only services like Tidal.
You're assuming the browser doesn't have vulnerabilities as well. Bad assumption.
I'll be honest.... I won't shed a tear if a good 50 or 60% of the existing web sites die off, due to lack of revenue generation.
Maybe then we'll get back to something more sane? Look, I get that a lot of special interest blog sites would die if they didn't receive ad revenue. I used to write for one of them myself. (And guess what? It died, because they couldn't generate enough page hits to impress enough advertisers to spend a lot of money on it.)
But ultimately, it's survival of the fittest like anything else. I think it would be in the best interest of a lot of businesses to host and pay for sites related in some way to products or services they sell, so that would theoretically keep quite a few of them afloat. (A few of the car related forums I'm on work like that.... They're partially funded by contributions by area car dealerships that want to sponsor them, and they charge annual fees for 3rd. parties to host a message base on the forum where they can advertise whatever they like with new message posts.) This model keeps out the spam/malware and ensures target marketing by default. The users LIKE the sponsors and their marketing because it typically includes discount coupon codes on various products of interest, and ensures good
customer service when a forum "regular" also happens to be the owner of the company you bought your items from!
In other cases, people should just learn to accept that hosting a web site is going to cost them something. It really shouldn't cost much, in most cases. If you're not streaming out a bunch of video content or hosting huge downloads, your blog site just isn't likely to generate massive amounts of bandwidth usage (what most hosting services really bill for, because storage space itself is dirt cheap). Every hobby I ever had cost me some money.... Deciding to run a special interest blog or message forum should be no different.
Because you've set the the Java applet and Flash Player plug-ins to "click to play" mode.
As if JavaScript was inherently safe. Browsers are adding more and more "web" APIs and better optimizations, the attack surface is growing. If you want "secure" then JavaScript has to join the others in "click to play" mode. Bonus: the most annoying adds are also silenced.
So the advertisers (or their mouthpieces) are calling the people that would block ads sociopathic? That's rich.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I'm either going to [...] make note of the advertiser and NEVER patronize them simply because they forced me to sit thru an ad I had no interest in seeing.
Good luck doing this when the ad is a public service announcement brought to you by your local electric monopoly. Care to join the Amish?
Stop assuming, because we're talking about security. Assumptions have no place in this discussion.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Jon Stewart once signed off the Daily Show with "If you used a DVR to skip our ads, you're a thief" or some such - it was a sharp way to highlight the foolishness of these guys. We skipped ads when it was only broadcast TV all the time by stepping out to make a sandwich.
The only thing we're doing is voting with our feet that content providers should find another way to fund their work. It's no more immoral than renting direct-to-video movies were immoral compared to watching broadcast TV.
Then assume that the browsers all have security vulns that are available to anyone who is willing to look for them. Because they do. If you don't accept that, then your model is broken.
The only reasonable thing is to block all ads if you don't want to get hit by an exploit.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Then assume that the browsers all have security vulns that are available to anyone who is willing to look for them. Because they do.
If the assumption is that all Internet-facing applications have vulnerabilities that can be exploited to take full administrative control of a computer, what is the mitigation other than abstaining from the Internet?
The only reasonable thing is to block all ads if you don't want to get hit by an exploit.
Now define "all ads" in a way that allows a machine to correctly determine what is a non-ad. Is a can of Pepsi in a movie an "ad"?
If the assumption is that all Internet-facing applications have vulnerabilities that can be exploited to take full administrative control of a computer, what is the mitigation other than abstaining from the Internet?
I don't think you're understanding something here. Usually, when I go to Yahoo.com, or to Microsoft.com, the content on the page is all generated by the company, and the chance of them trying to attack your computer is low.
That is not the same with ads on a webpage. In the modern world, anyone can put an ad onto yahoo.com, all they have to do is pay. Yahoo doesn't closely examine the ads that are placed on the page. They don't even own the server that is serving the ads.
So, when you visit Microsoft.com, you are essentially saying, "Microsoft, I trust you to run code on my computer." When you visit a page with ads, you are saying, "I trust any random person to run code on my computer." That is a bad idea, and exploits have been found in ads.
In fact, I don't see any way you can look at that and say, "yeah, running unknown code on my computer? Great idea!" Furthermore, the ad networks really don't care.....the people paying are the customers, and when they try to stop malevolence, they are primarily focused on click-fraud, which hurts their customers, not malware.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
First of all, there were web pages before the onset of ads. There are still big pages that can exist without ads. Some would perish, but I doubt that something we deem valuable would be unavailable for long. I could currently not think of a single page that I would honestly miss dearly should it perish due to a lack of ad revenue.
Blocking ads is a rather recent development, and mostly due to increasingly obnoxious ads. Of course you had the hardcore anti-ad people who would block ads on principle, who went out of their way to block them, rewriting DNS entries in their servers and even developing their own page-manipulating plugins. But they were few. They existed for a long time and they hardly mattered.
When it started to matter was when "normal" people started reaching for ad blockers, and they would not have done it if ads hadn't evolved into something that is SO obnoxious that people who accept ads in their TV shows. Can you remotely imagine how much you have to piss someone off to go out of his way to find a remedy who is used to having his TV series interrupted every 10 minutes for a 2 minute commercial break? How much you have to piss someone off who puts up with THIS?
But the genie is out of the bottle now. The ad industry slaughtered the goose that lays the golden eggs. People are not going to uninstall their adblockers, even if the ads went back to a saner form.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.