How do you feel about disabling javascript by default, and making things click-to-play? I ask because I think the line between "advert used for site finance," and "drive-by malware" can sometimes be blurry.
I think that when I click on a link I agree to see the content they provide. I'm not sure I really want to agree to third-party stuff without knowing what it is - and I'm very sure I don't want to start loading third party scripts automatically.
Fair enough, but if your browser is susceptible to drive-by malware, you're going to have a bad time on the internet whether you block ads or not. I think hacked sites are a far more common malware vector than ads.
That's a bit of a strawman, isn't it? No one is saying their ad blocker is their "only" protection. But when you go to to an ad-infested site like huffington post, with dozens of different ad sources on each page, an ad blocker can cut your exposure to a small fraction of what it would be otherwise.
It's not that simple. Except for the simplest ones that might just be an image, ads are not just ads like in magazines and on TV.
Ads use your resources to download more content. They use your resources for animation and sound.
They also track you.
Content providers are free to not serve you content if they detect ad blockers. If they have trouble detecting ad blockers, they are free to not be in business.
They are free to move to a subscription model.
They are operating willingly on the current open web. It's not your problem.
I don't use AdBlock Plus but i do use AdBlock. I think its my decision to choose which ads i watch and which i don't. It's not stealing, Webmasters can detect if someone is using AdBlock or not.
Perfectly acceptable. I believe it's within everyone's right to filter what hits their browser (and what their browser gets in the first place) as much as it is the website's right to serve whomever they want.
They should attempt to use technical means, though, as it's unlikely that a simple 'Do you use adblock?' prompt is going to work very well.
As I noted elsewhere in this thread, I whitelisted Reddit when they noticed my ad blocker and they politely asked me to think about it. It can be done. One solution among probably many.
Their website, their right, their choice. Of course, people protesting/boycotting/etc. those who block people who block ads is also their right and their choice.
> So what's your view on sites blocking people with AdBlock?
It's the web equivalent of an a entitled-feeling child throwing a tantrum.
People who use ad-blocking software, and temporarily disable it on your page just to view the content, are not going to click on the ads.
Furthermore, if you take additional measures to make them click on the ads ("please visit our sponsor first"), that constitutes click fraud. Users who click on an ad just to view the content are not interested in what is being advertized at all, and will not convert to buyers.
Morally, it is within a hair's breadth of sending Javascript to the user's browser which simulates that user clicking on the ad (so that it looks like a real visit, as the ad syndicate knows), which would be blatant click fraud.
It's actually not easy to detect adblock use. Popular ad blockers actively try to evade detection. If the intent is to let publishers decide whether to allow adblock users or not, it should send an easily detectable flag.
Put a div tag with a class of "ad" on it... then test it's display style property 100ms after the load event...
For that matter, wrap your primary content in a div with a class of "ad" ... then users won't even see the content, and you can replace it with a notice to disable adblock and refresh the page.
Funny, I had no problem detecting this on a site with several million unique visitors a month... Of course I did the detection against my actual ad tags in the page...
Wouldn't you be getting false positives from ads that are simply slow to load and false negatives from ad blockers that hide ads without using the "display" property?
It wouldn't control anything on your machine. It allows the web site to control whether they send content to you or not.
I use AB Edge. I've visited Reddit, they posted a "we notice you use an ad blocker, if you like us, please think about whitelisting us." They could have just refused to serve the content. Either way would have been acceptable; it's my browser and I control what I see, it's their content and they control where it goes.
In that case I whitelisted Reddit. Nothing on Reddit remote-controlled my machine, it just initiated a brief "conversation."
>> It's not stealing, Webmasters can detect if someone is using AdBlock or not.
In other words it's not stealing unless you get caught?
Edit: Relax people. Let's not get into another debate on copying vs. theft. I was merely pointing out that the parents analogy (which was the one that referenced stealing) was bad.
Is Google stealing from them when they crawl their pages but don't load in the ads? What about when I wget their page? Am I stealing from them now? Maybe when I disable javascript in my browser? Am I now a thief?
No, I am not. It's not stealing whatsoever, ever. Even if they detect you're not loading in all the content they want you to load. If they manage to detect this, then they can choose to block your access to the content. Or perhaps rework their revenue model if it turns out it isn't working.
Not the op but, I often disable adblock on sites I enjoy because I feel similarly. I'm not really interested in a semantic debate about what is or is not "stealing," but it certainly deprives others of revenue for creating content I get value from. When that content is otherwise free except for ads, it makes me feel rather shitty to go out of my way to block their revenue stream.
Edit: that said, I do still keep adblock on for sites with rather abusive or obnoxious ads.
Virtually every ad is abusive or obnoxious, because they track you. That's probably the leverage that makes online ads worthwhile. That's for better targeted ads, what could be wrong with that (unless maybe you see an ad for sex toys while you're looking at a site with your kid, oops). But data about you can be misused, or stolen and misused, and it's better in general to just not let the data be collected; you don't really know what they're doing with it.
Interesting observation: ad networks collect data about us, they can clearly identify us as individuals (which is why you see those sex toy ads after visiting a sex toy site, for hypothetical example). But there was never a privacy statement involved.
We're obviously going to have different definitions of abusive and obnoxious, but for the record I don't find tracking that I visited a website to fall under that category. I was speaking more for pop ups and things that play video or music.
And as I said, adblock has it's uses. If you don't want your kids to see ads for sex toys, nothing wrong with using adblock when visiting those types of sites.
>In other words it's not stealing unless you get caught?
Not comparable. Try: In other words, it's not stealing when you don't donate to a street performer, especially one who gets in your way and impedes normal use of the street (like auto play videos with sound).
Is jumping a subway turnstile stealing? The same train leaves whether you're on it or not. But if enough people don't pay the fare, the whole system breaks down.
This is more like watching the trains come and go, from outside of the station, but ignoring the ads which are painted on the train.
Speaking of looking at printed ads, imagine you had a car which, instead of a windshield, had a high resolution camera and a display. This display would contain image processing which identifies billboards and blackens them out, while leaving traffic signs intact.
Would that be stealing?
Basically, the argument is that not looking at something is stealing.
Where does it stop? What if you're looking, but not processing it congnitively? That must be, in Orwellian terms, a "thought crime": you're looking at the ad, but staring blankly, and its semantics isn't sinking in; you're not allowing the ad to turn into meaning in your mind make you want the product.
I think jumping a turnstile is self-evidently stealing. It is also the case that it becomes a problem for everyone when enough people do it, but it would be stealing either way.
This is some ridiculous pedantry. Theft is a synonym for stealing. Merriam Webster even defines it as the "act of stealing." So if you're going to use "theft of service" as an acceptable phrase, then "stealing a service" must also work conceptually. To complain that is unacceptable to shorten that to just stealing in a conversation is utterly ludicrous.
There is no theft of service until you take a train to another station, and then jump the gates there to exit.
If you want to get around the gates to enter a station without a ticket, you can just ask the staff. I've done it a couple of times in Japan. You can get inside to look for a lost item or whatever. They even let people in to access the station shops. I watched one tourist ask for that and be granted.
Also, one time I entered a station without swiping my Suica card through the machine. I explained that at the destination station and where I had boarded; they cheerfully fixed it up and let me exit. There is room for mistakes without being automatically branded a thief just for being there.
I get the point you're trying to make, but in this case it's me who is paying for the train to move, in the form of internet connection & electricity bills
To quote an old saying, "Nothing in life is free."
Websites rely on ad revenue. If the ads are blocked the website or streamers on Twitch do not receive the revenue. Just because it doesn't go into my pocket doesn't mean it isn't stealing in my own personal view.
For example if you take a sapphire from the Museum of Natural History and than throw away or lose the golf ball size 563 carat Star of India. You gained nothing from taking it but you still are guilty of stealing a diamond.
PS I am extremely conservative in my person morals. I am also fairly liberal in my view of society (At least that is what my Tea Party Inlaws and Libertarian friends say)
>Websites rely on ad revenue. If the ads are blocked the website or streamers on Twitch do not receive the revenue.
And I'm perfectly happy with that.
It is not my responsibility to download webpages in such a way as to maximise the revenue of the site owner.
It is the business' responsibility to make money. Not mine. If they are employing ineffective methods then it is up to them to alter them. It is not up to me to change my behaviour to suit their business plan.
I am perfectly within my rights to download web pages using whatever software I like, whether that be lynx, wget, curl, a screen-reader, or Firefox with add-ons or Firefox with javascript or images or widgets or cookies blocked. I use the software that suits me. I am under no obligation - legal or moral - to use the software that suits companies serving websites.
If the advertising is so appallingly bad that 100% of people are blocking it, then it doesn't deserve to exist, does it?
The idea of advertising is to get people interested in some product or service; not to provide an income stream for websites that can't persuade users to pay for their content.
I had no idea ABP accepted money from advertisers to be put on their whitelist. I know they have to make money somehow but this just seems suspiciously like extortion to me.
No it isn't, because no payment is required to view the page in question.
How it works is that your browser downloads a page. That page contains scripts and links. Thanks to blocking software working on your behalf, the browser picks and chooses what of that cruft it should activate and what it should ignore.
Nobody has a right to make your computer fetch unwanted content and throw it in your face.
It's like looking at a tray of hors d'oeuvres, and choosing a few that you like, avoiding ones you don't find palatable.
Anyway, not long ago, I obtained a full refund for a bag of apples that were rotten, even though I ate some of it. That is normal.
There is no fucking "implicit agreement" when you look at a publicly available website, any more than when you look at a billboard on the street. I'm sorry for cussing, but no one gets to dictate the manner in which you use your eyes in public spaces.
Only if the store sold Apples under the expectation that everyone could eat their Apples first before paying and genetically modified the Apples to have hidden rotten parts.
You can disable that white list of "unobtrusive advertising" by unchecking a single tick box.
I use it because it works and has worked for a long time. I tried µBlock but it was leading to weird short lockups of my Firefox after a longer session.
When I am teaching I have ad blocker installed because I don't want to get in trouble for what advertisement will be shown, especially YouTube.
AdBlock Plus and their paid white list is the worst and I don't know why people use them.