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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
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.
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.
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.
You're assuming the browser doesn't have vulnerabilities as well. Bad assumption.
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.
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...
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."