Slashdot Mirror
UK Gov't Launches Anti-Adblocking Initiative, Compares It To Piracy (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: UK culture secretary John Whittingdale has announced that the British government will set up a 'round-table' between online publishers and adblocking companies to discuss the 'problem' of adblocking. He described the practice of charging companies to be whitelisted as a 'modern day protection racket', and said: "Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse." The issue has largely been left to the market to self-regulate until now, although Germany's courts ruled adblocking legal in 2015.
If we don't pay politicians who come up with these stupid ideas, maybe they will no longer exist?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
People who abuse free samples are equivalent to thieves, people who test drive cars excessively are car jackers, and those taking more pennies than they leave are bank robbers!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
If your product has adverts then adverts are part of your product. That makes YOU responsible for them. So if they annoy the ever living crap out of your users then it is YOUR fault.
So if you need adverts then take some responsibility. That means making sure you don't have adverts so obnoxious or malware ridden that your users want to block them. If the users want to block your adverts it is your fault and you have failed.
If you just want to "maximize your monetization" or simply can't be arsed to do a decent job, then you have no sympathy from me.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Looks like Whittingdale is the best politician money can buy!
Seriously, I wonder how much he's been paid by various ad companies to shill that hard for them.
"then that content will eventually no longer exist" - for most content out there, this sounds like an excellent plan
Just because I make a request to a server for content doesn't mean that I have to make additional requests to other servers to get ads. What if I use a browser like lynx or links, which is incapable of displaying most ads? Is that also piracy? Also, I'd really like to see some lawsuits against advertising providers and websites displaying ads when those ads contain malware. Someone needs to be liable for not properly vetting ads.
I'll support anti-blocking initiative, if and only if these websites and ad providers are held criminally and financially liable for any damage caused by malicious ads.
I've never heard of a TV ad locking up someone's TV and ask for ransom. Hold online ads to the same standard.
It's simple â" get people used to not being able to block content sent to them, and you'll get people who won't say boo when government-required tracking software is mandatory on any net-connected device. When people don't believe that what belongs to them is theirs, there are amazing things you can get done.
brwski
"Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well''
He described the practice of charging companies to be whitelisted as a 'modern day protection racket', and said: "Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist
That's EXACTLY the point. I didn't agree to view advertising in exchange for the content. Nobody contacted me about the arrangement to find out how I felt about it. If their business model depends on annoying me in a way that I have the power to stop then it should surprise no one when I go ahead and stop them from bothering me. Their stupid business model is not my problem.
How about a Govt who has a backbone to say No, the public do not want Ads. I bloddy hate ads on TV and we have gone from 3min ads 3 times and hour 10 years ago to ads 5 mins into programme start, then 8 mins later we 6min ads, then 8 mins later another 6mins etc etc.
When downloading 1 hour programmes off the SKY network the progrtames are now only 35 mins of content, then we have crappy TV producers who fill the tv programs with loads of "What's coming Up" and Recaps that the 35min of content is now actually 23mins of content.
The odds now of turning a TV and hitting an ad break is nearly 83%.
So no to TV ads and No to Ads on my broadband.
This is government whoring out its citizens for the sake of corporate business interests. Nothing more grand than that.
To meaningfully understand consumer backlash to advertising means we need to go back all the way to 1986. It was here, when advertisers switched from building a product to building a brand and decoupling their reliance on a product entirely. Its also worth noting many scholars reference the 80s to a period of peak consumption. we had more choices than ever, and could no longer reliably rely on quality as a metric for purchases. by the 90s manufacturers through NAFTA and CAFTA had cemented this concept of american "brand" consumption entirely. Advertising, arguably, now had to become entirely predatory.
luxury cars were no longer sold on quality and luxury, but on a brand of cultivated superiority and projection of affluence. Athletic shoes, appliances, food, you name it, suddenly became a feature of a culture you could define yourself by and not a product you were actually seeking. "what does it do, how well does it do it" was no longer offered to be considered. And as brands forced more and more lifestyle and experience into their products they began to run out of understanding of culture, or the entropy by which their brand-centric consumerism thrived.
fast forward to this foul year 2016. ads now track you, sites track you, and campaigns overtly demand your input. there are entire analytic suites and social science departments that study you like a petri dish for any semblance of clue as to what defines your wants, and how to exploit your desires. they do this because without information about who you are and what you do, the product cant be targeted to appeal to what lifestyle you can be made to desire. Be it astronaut, playboy, or racecar driver. unless the idea of brand-as-culture is dialed back, this is only going to get worse.
what we're seeing online is a revolt against the intrusiveness of ads from bandwidth to page view and browser experience, but its also a revolt against the idea of a consumer as a lab-rat
Good people go to bed earlier.
This reminds me of that ass-clown Jamie Kellner (chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting) who claimed that using your DVR to skip commercials was like stealing:
"Because of the ad skips, It’s theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you’re actually stealing the programming."
That's odd, because I don't remember signing any contract that says I have to watch commercials.
Apparently this also applies to going to the bathroom during commercial breaks. If you do that, you're stealing!
So in response to John Whittingdale, I'll give him the exact same response I gave to Jamie Kellner, and that was, "Fuck you."
I run some ad-supported sites, and if they die off because the visitors use ad-blockers, so be it. "Them's the breaks." In short, no one owes me anything, and if my site visitors decide to use an ad-blocker, that's fine with me.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
That nice BBC system you have over there has worked quite well for some time and should be emulated elsewhere.
Advertising revenue does not guarantee quality content. Far from it. A huge portion of the internet seems to have already devolved into click-bait with ads. If the choice is between that and nothing, I'll take nothing, There is still life beyond the browser.
Slashdotters, how can We The People better be heard by government? I know they don't really care about us, but if speak unified, strongly, and tenaciously, they won't be able to play their money games. It's obvious that govt. officials don't use the web much or they'd understand.
"'Sire, sire, the peasants are revolting!' 'Of course they're revolting, they haven't bathed in years.'"
But I now use an ad blocker for a very simple reason.
I was looking at a web site for some information that I was interested in and in the middle of my reading, the page suddenly scrolled to somewhere in the middle and started playing a video ad. I stopped the video and then spent a fair amount of time attempting to actually resume my reading at the place where I was interrupted (not extremely easy since it was a long page with lots of dense text and I had been involuntarily scrolled away from my place without warning).Just as I resumed reading, the damn ad once again scrolled me away from where I was and started playing the video again. After a few cycles of this bullshit, I decided to install an ad blocker and then went back to the page and actually managed to get the information I desired. And since it's quite frankly easier to block all ads instead of configuring the ad block to only block on certain pages, I by default block all ads. And I have no desire to go back to having ads again. My web pages load faster and I no longer have the damn ads attempting to vie for my attention.
In a further statement UK culture secretary John Whittingdale announced that timed security locks would be placed on every toilet door and kettle across the UK in order to prevent television viewers from doing anything other than watching adverts during commercial breaks. The locks would come on automatically as soon as a commercial break began.
"We were proposing automated handcuffs synchronised to commercial breaks be fitted to sofas and chairs at the factory," said Whittingdale. "However those foreign communists running Ikea refused to comply so we've reverted to other means to ensure people pay for their TV content."
A spokes lizard for the UK Advertising Association, when asked for comment, simply said "I'm loving' it, taste the feeling, have it your way," and slithered off to another meeting.
The secretary is right that charging companies to be whitelisted is bad (for many different reasons). But somehow he goes from that ethical conundrum about making money by lying to your customers (by not blocking ads) and making money as a middle-man (by charging advertisers) to the idea that ad-blocking itself is bad...
How do you even manage logic that faulty?
Sideways
Comment removed based on user account deletion
if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist
~Right - that's why no content existed on the internet before advertising became a part of it.~
So, I pay for content by allowing someone to annoy me?
Is anyone making an adblock that would download all ad content and promptly send it to /dev/null instead of displaying it? Such adblock will be invisible to the server and the extra bandwidth doesn't matter much on a broadband connection.
Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse.
Yes... and protecting adverts with legislation and vilification of users will prevent sites from innovating and finding better ways for users to pay for content.
If record companies forced users to pay for music with tractors as a currency, people would quickly get fed up trying to find tractors to exchange for CDs and mp3s. The record companies then have two options: 1. go out of business, 2. find a better model for funding.... if you didn't guess already, adverts are tractors.
I can also stick with a factual analogy with music: Muse for instance gets a large part of it's funding from concerts, so an entirely feasible business model could be to give their music away for free for non-commercial use and then sell concert tickets... I wonder how sites could indirectly profit from giving away free content... That's the discussion that needs to be had.
NO MORE TRACTORS!!
I request a document, you send it to my computer, for free (if it's not behind a paywall of course).
Now when it's on my computer, I can do whatever I want with that document. I can delete it, I can edit it, I can keep only parts of it, and then display the result on my screen. You sent me the document, your control of it ends there. I can't republish it or use part of it in another publication of course, but apart from that, as long as it stays on my computer, you have no control as to what I'll do with it.
With an adblocker, I can also choose which content I want to download on my computer. The page asks me to get an ad from another server, I can choose not to fetch that content. It's only some instructions in the document asking me to get some content from another server, I can refuse that data. Nobody can force me to transfer data I don't want on my computer, I'm paying for the electricity, bandwith, hdd space and cpu.
It's like those free newspaper in the subway. I can take one, and throw it in the fire before having read it. I can take a pair of scissors and cut away all the ads before reading it. I can take a pen and write anything I want on it, altering the content. I can cut out every word or letter and glue them on another sheet of paper to make it say what I want. What difference will it make to this newspaper's publisher? They can't know what I'm doing with it, he doesn't care, the advertisers have already paid their share for appearing in it, without knowing if anyone would see the ads.
It should be the same on the web, advertisers should pay their share for their ad to appear on the web page. The web page publisher can guarantee that the necessary code is in place to display the ad. He can't guarantee that the user asking for the page and displaying it on his screen will display the ad.
Why does it work for paper publications but they can't accept this same principle on the web?
Send me the document, put ads in it, and I'll do what I want with it. Simple.
If you want money, put it behind a paywall and see if your content it good enough to attract paying readers.
Try it! Library of Babel
If Ads are blocked by the user then block the content, they can do that. No one will "steal" their content, shut up and stop whining. Will they risk that?
-no sig today-
...will set up a 'round-table' between online publishers and adblocking companies...
Someone needs be in attendance at that round-table event to advocate for the users who employ the ad blockers, so that the users can explain why they are used.
.
It is the users who are CHOOSING to use the ad blockers. The users should be represented in that government-sponsored round-table event.
As I understand them, current adblockers don't even pull in the content from the Internet in the first place. Why not write an adblocker that gets the content, but doesn't render it to the screen? Unwanted Flash content (yes, I know, Flash is going away soon, hurray!) could be executed in a sandbox, that also isn't rendered to the user's screen. Yes, I'm advocating being very sneaky about this; I'm proposing an adblocker that, unless you're sitting in front of the browser using it, can't be detected. I'm also working under the assumption that most people don't pay any attention to Internet ads in the first place, and that the difference between them and people who use adblockers is just the adblocker. Why can't an adblocker be written this way?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This is becoming a trend!
After the Congestion Fee for driving in town, the Upgrade Fee for centre seats at the theatre, we now have the ridiculous idea of banning Adblockers, the last prophylactic in our arsenal against e-fections.
This madness must stop forthwith!
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
slashdot isn't dead until the third time netcraft confirms it.
Sensational title. From the article (and various others):
"Whittingdale expressed his preference for the industry to self-regulate"
Not Government regulation at all. His speech was very much targeted at his audience and I'm no fan of the opinion expressed, but he has not kicked off a government initiative to legislate against AdBlock.
I would rather have the content "no longer exist" than deal with the ads. There was a very long time in which I didn't block ads. Then the ads got way too intrusive and aggressive. Now I block ads on everything, install ad blockers on all client systems, and will never go back. I don't care if the content of the internet reverts back to what it was in the mid-90s. I really don't give a crap. It's better to have limited content without the ads.
Solve the problem of malware being served first then once that self-defence is out of the way look at coming to a resolution of acceptable advertisements.
Shh.
Barking at the waves to make them stop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It seems the powers-that-be in Britain are taking their cue from the Australian stance on science censorship. When are all these fucktards going to get over their childish 'all your marbles are belong to us' fixation? Possibly when the 'peasants' switch from the adjectival form to the verbal form of 'revolting'.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
It costs money to confirm that content is safe for consumption, ads are no different. The whitelisting fee goes toward verifying that the ad is safe, non-intrusive, and not a vector for malware.
So, if the U.K. makes ad blocking illegal; does that mean that their porn filters then become illegal?
Also... If it is illegal to block ads; does it thus become illegal to not view a site or all sites? Will I have my eyes held open and be forced to watch every ad on the planet?
He's going to be pissed when he finds out what a HOSTS file is.
Ad blocking isn't the problem, intrusive and dangerous ads are the problem.
Politicians, as a rule, are too dimwitted to come up with ideas like this on their own. A quick bit of investigating should reveal the puppetmaster pulling these particular strings.
Also, "Adblock plus" does NOT equate to ad blockers. That's just one particular operation run by a shady fucker who accepts payoffs from advertisers who want to be allowed through his doorway. I (and many others) have been pointing out for the better part of a decade that Palant can't be trusted, as has been made clear over and over by his actions.
Except that they're not just charging to allow content through. They're charging to be able to pay people to actually check the content for acceptableness. People have already compared it to the various ratings organizations charging in order to rate material into the various grades.
Hell, I'll assert that I think that it's less the fee, because most companies would be willing to accept less money where they currently get no money, than it is the content rules. Not being allowed to use flash, sound, movies, blinking images, all the other annoying 'sight pullers' results in what they think are less effective ads. This is despite said distracting ads being precisely why we install ad-blockers in the first place.
That someone was willing to pay them should be the LAST factor for whether an ad is "acceptable" and unblocked by default.
How about you review their policy? Payment is pretty far down the list.
Placement - can't disrupt reading flow
Distinction - must be able to tell it's an ad.
Size - Limited to 15% 'above the fold', IE visible on the screen when it first loads, and no more than 25% for scrolling
"Specific Rules"
Text ads designed with excessive use of colors and/or other elements to grab attention are not permitted.
Static image ads may qualify as acceptable, according to an evaluation of their unobtrusiveness based on their integration on the webpage.
In-feed ads - For ads in lists and feeds, the general criteria differ depending on: Placement requirements, Ads are permitted in between entries and feeds.
Not acceptable:
Ads that visibly load new ads if the Primary Content does not change
Ads with excessive or non user-initiated hover effects
Animated ads
Autoplay-sound or video ads
Expanding ads
Generally oversized image ads
Interstitial page ads
Overlay ads
Overlay in-video ads
Pop-ups
Pop-unders
Pre-roll video ads
Rich media ads (e.g. Flash ads, Shockwave ads, etc.)
From a time management standpoint, I find the above rules acceptable. If you're willing to comply with them, I'm willing to be served by those ads. Also, by allowing Adblock to manage the list, I save everybody time over having to roll my own solution, which I used to do via proximatron and hosts file, way, way, back in the day.
I don't read AC A human right
Adblocking really is just like piracy. A better product at a better price.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Except that people don't block these ads. Most ABP users allow "acceptable ads," including me.
Let's be frank. The ONLY reason for that is because most ABP users don't know they can block even more ads by digging for their hidden little check box and the don't exactly make it convenient or obvious. It should be opt-in, not opt-out. ABP is doing a form of extortion but since the advertisers have behaved SOOO badly I don't really care in this case.
Assumptions that I'm going to be ok with any form of advertising by default are going to be met by me with hostility. I run several ad blockers, I watch pretty much all TV with a DVR, and I charge an hourly rate for my time if people want my attention for commercial purposes. I don't allow even "acceptable" ads because my definition of acceptable differs from ABP.
I'm perfectly happy to pay a reasonable subscription fee to website I find valuable. I currently pay for several of them. If they want me to view ads then they need to start paying me in cash money at a rate I find agreeable because my price for my time and attention is considerable higher than the value to me of any content they are likely to provide. I have a price but it isn't cheap.
then that content will eventually no longer exist
Good. This is exactly the point. The content is worthless with the obnoxious advertising baggage, tracking garbage and malware infections that comes with it. Let the worthless advertisement laden sites sink under their own weight.
What the hell happened to the UK? They've gone from a seemingly respectable place to a landmass governed by the dumbest fucking people in existence... or maybe they've always been that dumb, but the internet is allowing the stupidity to be relayed in real-time and unforgotten?
I'd look at ads if the advertiser paid me to. Maybe
I suspect most people would if you paid them enough. I certainly would though my hourly rate would be considered absurdly high by any reasonable advertiser. I consider my time to be a precious resource and charge accordingly.
You forgot "Blipverts".
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Where? I copy-pasted some of what was on adblockplus's page. They didn't have 'blipverts' in there. They would probably be covered under 'overlay ads'.
I don't read AC A human right
If they stop serving malware with the adverts I'll listen
I'll take adverts when they stopping serving malware with them
Oh and when my page load times are under the magic 7 seconds with ad enabled
That's Captain Jack Sparrow to you! Arggggh!
Have gnu, will travel.
"Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist. And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse."
Oh yeah? So is it true for Linux? Or LibreOffice?The other day, when I downloaded the latest version of LibreOffice, I made a voluntary donation. But that was MY choice - I could download their software from now untul Kingdom Come and I wouldn't have to pay a penny.
John Whittingdale is talking sheer nonsense. Try these:
"Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist. And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the alphabet, the number system, the periodic table, the English language (and all other languages)..."
Frankly, these days I reckon that the more a piece of journalism costs to read, the less worth while reading it is.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
This is another attack on the owner/user's ability to control what their computer does. Banning ad-blocking effectively means that as soon as I type a URL in and hit enter, I give unconditional control of a number of aspects of my browser over to the server, and if the author of the content on the server abuses that position, I am not allowed to do anything about it. The client/server arrangement on the web is one of trust. That trust can be abused in various ways. If a website expects ad revenue to fund itself, and users deny it that revenue, that is a problem from the point of view of the content provider, but if the website uses adverts excessively (for example so that various sites are no-go areas of you are on a mobile broadband link with a relatively small cap), then that is an abuse of the control handed to the website by the user. I long for a simple, honest web, but have no real hope of seeing much of one in the near future.
John_Chalisque
Radical jihadist host file advocates are the ones pushing this! You know who you are...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Hell, I'll assert that I think that it's less the fee, because most companies would be willing to accept less money where they currently get no money, than it is the content rules. Not being allowed to use flash, sound, movies, blinking images, all the other annoying 'sight pullers' results in what they think are less effective ads. This is despite said distracting ads being precisely why we install ad-blockers in the first place.
Yes, the raison d'être of an ad is to attract attention. So I can't see many sites and apps with compelling content wanting to restrict themselves to ineffective "acceptable ads". Sites like Google can however get away with them, because the content is already similar to acceptable ads. Static newspaper ads have always mostly been both acceptable and profitable, but that was before the explosion of information sources, and the associated quickening pace of life, stripped them of much of the attention time they once had.
Free content leads to the content not-existing?
So, shouldn't we allow the free distribution of child porn, in order to ensure that (since money can't be made on it) eventually child porn will stop existing?
I love the internet and the web in particular. In all of history's inventions, I'd put it at number three; first fire, then kissing, then the web. This ability to share information, emotions, beauty, tragedy and all the little parts of ourselves that make us human, this web, is one of the best things to ever happen to our species. But advertising is a cancer on that beautiful thing. It is a cancer that needs to be burned out, no matter the cost to the tissue it infests.
If the poor web advertisers have no income, not only does it not bother me, it amuses me. If it means every, single website that can't exist without running advertisements dies, I can live with that. Do not assume that I need a particular website, I am older than the internet, let alone the web, and I remember how to live without it.
It didn't have to be this way. There are plenty of advertisements that don't bother me, in all sorts of media. This situation with ad-blocking on the web was caused by the advertisers. They are the ones that brought you pop-ups, pop-unders and pages that couldn't be closed! A complete failure of their business model is too good for them.
"The advertising business is completely screwy now. You know they’ve reintroduced the death penalty for advertising company directors?”
“Really?” said Arthur. “No, I didn’t. For what offence?”
Trillian frowned.
“What do you mean, offence?”
“I see."
(Misquoted from Mostly Harmless.)
The best definition I've heard of ads is that they are the advertiser trying to substitute "their version" of reasonable thinking about a product (Wow, it's so incredible I have to have, like any reasonable person would!) for my own reasonable thinking. Most modern folks are so used to having their thinking hijacked by ads that they don't even realize what is going on. But when it sinks it, it is disgusting and immoral. I can do my own thinking, thank you. And I am good enough at Internet searches to find what I want when I want. So ad blockers are just preventing advertising from hijacking your thinking to their way of thinking. Good riddance! The personal cost to me of having my precious attention hijacked by advertisers is not factored into their thinking, but morally, it should be. I ought to be able to spend my attention where I choose, not where they choose.
Ok, let's do this, let's see some real regulations:
1. Hard limits on the amount of advertising that will be sent to my machine in a given amount of time.
2. Advertisers are responsible for the data their ads use, it doesn't contribute to my data limit with my service provider in any way, including (especially) mobile.
3. No scams. No fake download buttons. No fake virus scans. No fake Windows XP UI elements. No "my mom makes a million dollars every millisecond just sitting around on Google."
4. No tracking or profiling except by means of an absolutely explicit opt-in, which must describe the exact scope of the tracking (e.g. if it is limited to that particular site, etc.).
5. No hidden videos, anything that intends to make a sound must have a very clear, non-ambiguous, completely functional mute/pause/close button.
6. Any malware served through an ad platform is the full responsibility of the advertiser, and they can be held directly accountable for property damage.
I'm sure I could come up with more, but that's a start... Maybe, just maybe, I'll consider giving up my ad-blocker.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
The corporations that push this sort of bull are.
>Compares It To Piracy
Huh. Usually when we mention the slippery slope it's in future tense, not past tense.
>if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist
Sure, sure, let's see if music ceases to exist, let's see if no one makes music and it goes extinct.
Fucking rent seekers.
Since the option is 'acceptable but less effective' or 'no ads, no effect' it's not really a choice.
However 'effective' largely means compared to it's competition in a near zero sum game. Fighting over existing sales not creating new ones. That's how we got in this mess with continuous escalation 'for effect'.
Adblocking and whitelisting just level the playing field, removing the ability for excess. I might consider enabling it when the checkers prove they can do the job right.
What I'm unlikely to ever do is trust the sites or ad middlemen to police themselves. They'll surely try some scheme to bypass adblocker whitelisting. It will be ignored.
Hereditary lords with inherited fortunes and power? If so good luck with that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yes, the raison d'être of an ad is to attract attention.
I only have so much money though. I'd liken it to a game of shuffleboard - or perhaps a race to a cliff. The faster/closer to the cliff you get, the more points you earn. However, go over and you lose all the points.
As others have mentioned - Ad blocking wouldn't be such a big deal if the advertisers hadn't shat in their own pool and poisoned the viewing of it's audience. Ad-block for browsers. Taping and fast forwarding through ads. DVRs with skip forward. Hell, netflix and torrents.
I remember movies shown where, when I timed it, were over 50% ads. I could cook, and eat, a burger during the commercial breaks.
As Jerry mentioned, the choice is 'acceptable ads' for me, or NO ads. My policy is simple. You put up a 'I won't let you access the content without allowing ads' notice and I'll go elsewhere.
I don't read AC A human right
What I'm unlikely to ever do is trust the sites or ad middlemen to police themselves. They'll surely try some scheme to bypass adblocker whitelisting. It will be ignored.
They're actively trying to bypass the black lists. It takes time to get onto the white list, and far less time to get removed if they violate it. As it costs money to get onto it, it's not something they'll want to lose.
I don't read AC A human right
Since the option is 'acceptable but less effective' or 'no ads, no effect' it's not really a choice.
While there are still sufficient people who will cop (or don't know how to block) "unacceptable" ads, showing them will be what most sites choose, though sites could accommodate the ad-sensitive by allowing an acceptable-ad mode to be turned on (this would work because those who don't care are unlikely to turn it on).
Still, acceptable ads by virtue of their invisibility, or by virtue of being targeted at the ad-shy, don't pay well. So no ads, by making a site more attractive and more independent, may be a worthwhile choice if an alternative source of revenue is found. And there are alternatives.
Yes, the raison d'être of an ad is to attract attention.
I only have so much money though. I'd liken it to a game of shuffleboard - or perhaps a race to a cliff. The faster/closer to the cliff you get, the more points you earn. However, go over and you lose all the points.
The most aggressive capitalist usually wins. If they go too far, they can either back-off to the point of profit maximization, or re-open under a new identity.
As others have mentioned - Ad blocking wouldn't be such a big deal if the advertisers hadn't shat in their own pool and poisoned the viewing of it's audience.
Yes, it's been a death spiral as ad volume has been made to compensate for diminishing ad effectiveness. TV is adapting though, through a rise in subscription services. Subscriptions aren't the entire solution for news and information, but there is the option here of them getting compensated for helping their users make smart choices.
As Jerry mentioned, the choice is 'acceptable ads' for me, or NO ads. My policy is simple. You put up a 'I won't let you access the content without allowing ads' notice and I'll go elsewhere.
Global, ubiquitous, neutral, and cheap Internet connectivity has certainly put the power back in the consumers' hands. But unless alternative revenue sources are developed, there is a risk that the loss of ad revenue will result in a tragedy of the commons, where you either pay or get junk.
A long time ago I read an article on Howstuffworks.com titled "How Penny Per Page Might Work" http://computer.howstuffworks.... coming across it again I found it amusing they had taken a large article and split it into many sections with lots of right pane and middle page advertising.
Seems if things continue it may be a business model of some sites in some future time. But it's rare for an article to be restricted to one site, even if it's a summery.
A common sense approach is to use a HOST file, yet many sites have started seeing mine as an ad blocker, and honestly surprised as while I've satisfied the request of going to that site, I just don't make it further than the localhost itself.
where you either pay or get junk.
The fact that I subscribe to netflix and not Hulu indicates that in select situations I'm willing to pay. My TV hasn't been on in approximately a year. I find television ads painful today, short of select superbowl ones.
Other than that I'd suggest that they get with the program - it's rapidly reaching the point that 'acceptable' ads will have a higher response rate simply because people will actually see them. They're generally cheaper to serve as well, no loading a multi-meg package in order to allow me to 'punch the monkey', as opposed to a simple graphic that's a few kilobytes. Not that I ever punched the monkey except by mistake. So there's another thing for acceptable ads: Followthrough might be higher because if they're clicking it's deliberate, not because a site is crafted to make mis-clicks easy.
I don't read AC A human right
FTA: "Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist
Let's see, how long have I been blocking ads?
It required post-it notes in the early days to avoid those stupid punch-the-monkey animated GIF banner ads.
OK. 20 years. 20 years. If the 'Free Market' requires more than that to speak, then someone is being a corporate shill.
I can't speak for most ABP users, but I wonder what percentage of /. users disable advertising. I'm eligible to disable it but never have.
I would imagine not many but mostly because they are already using ad blocking software. Nothing gained by having slashdot block the ads when one is already doing it by default though third party software. I'd be happy to subscribe to slashdot if they would bother to offer it AND offer some value added features. Just blocking ads provides no value because I can already do that without spending a penny.
There are clearly times when we *want* ads. I want to know about new, exciting things that might benefit me.
"We want ads"? Speak for yourself. If you are actually interested in them I have no quarrel with that but I very definitely do NOT want ads. They provide me nothing of value aside from maybe a subsidy on some content. If something really is new and exciting I'll hear about it in other ways. I could live with ads in a newspaper despite the fact that they are wasteful because they were a subsidy of a sort. But on the internet there is a super creepy tracking/targeting component to the whole thing which I am NOT ok with. Not to mention the bandwidth consumption and malware vectoring. As far as I'm concerned online ads as they currently exist can die in a fire.
Blipverts is something you have 20 minutes into the future.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.