Ask Slashdot: To AdBlock Or Not To AdBlock? 716
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?
Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're one of those weird people who visits more than 3 or 4 websites a month, that model would get very expensive very quickly.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Interesting)
1 cent per page? I would owe $10 a day with that model. $300/month and close to $4000 a year. No. I much prefer the advertising that gives me free internet (also TV and radio). 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. Pretty soon I'd have a $2000 bill just to watch television I currently get for free. (Add another $1000 to get cable.)
No I prefer the ads. And believe it or not some of those ads are useful.... like the one that told me Dominoes has 50% off pizza. Or the one advertising the "Grimm" DVD. I discovered a new show. Or the one that informed me Volkswagen has finally released a diesel-powered Beetle. I was looking for a car and now I'll have one.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but come on - do you want to watch dull stuff produced by stiff, government lackeys like the BBC or stuff like Toddlers and Tiaras that is brought you by the free market?
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
actually advertising models are the best way to ensure the broadest most 'accessible' programming possible because advertisers want the most eyeballs possible. It is not what we need.. we need narrower, more focused, deeper entertainment targeted at different audiences.. Almost all of tv is targeted at the bottom barrel commonalities to ensure wide adoption, and it results in the most bland, boring programming imaginable.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Informative)
No.
The BBC get their revenue from a government monopoly. They schmooze the government of the day when their charter [culture.gov.uk] comes up for renewal. They pay zero attention to customer complaints.
BBC Model (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:BBC Model (Score:4, Informative)
A couple of years ago the Tory government in the UK were trying to reduce the BBC's budget dramatically, arguing that it's lost focus on its core objective of news. In particular, they wanted to scale back the websites to just basic news, arguing that the real content should be provided by newspapers' websites. The reality is that the public love and defend the BBC's diverse range of services, and in the end I think the bill was scrapped. Now, with the recent Olympics, the BBC successfully (without a hitch, from what I saw) broadcast web-based feeds of 30 sporting events simultaneously, to tens of millions of viewers at once. Not only that, but you could rewind and seek within the live stream videos to rewatch notable events. They've recently extended the same functionalty to their iPlayer (catch-up TV) service, allowing me to rewind a programme that's currently broadcasting if I've missed the beginning.
The licence fee is an absolute bargain. I'd happily pay twice that amount. The only comparable website (and there are no real comparisons) would perhaps be the Guardian newspaper's website, which at least competes for news content. It doesn't make a stab at history [bbc.co.uk] sections, archives [bbc.co.uk] of old film footage (such as the Titanic launch), learning/revision services for school kids [bbc.co.uk], a news service entirely aimed at kids [bbc.co.uk] (and toddlers [bbc.co.uk]), science [bbc.co.uk]...
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I started paying in ways I had not imagined. I was complaining on Slashdot on the Firefox memory leak topic, about catching viruses and forced reboots because of memory leaks. A generous fellow slashdotter offered his advice to install NoScript. Frustrated at all the problems "thinking outside the box" script programmers were causing for me, I went ahead and installed NoScript. Its made a big difference. It wasn't the ads I was trying to block, rather it was the scripts they were launching doing only God-knows-what. If a webmaster wants me to see an ad, I have no problem at all with that. Running an unknown script with unknown intentions is a horse of a different color. Especially when they misbehave, cause me problems, and force me to reboot to clean up the mess so the system runs again.
It was not the ad which caused me to install blocking technology, rather it was the abuse of the scripting system by unscrupulous scriptwriters.
Back to the orange vendor analogy, people might be highly motivated to steal the oranges rather than pay for them if attempting to pay for one resulted in the vendor spraying them with tar at the cash register. The honest guy who paid finds himself having to go clean himself off, while the thief got off scot-free.
The abuse of payment systems is the main reason I am extremely leery of paying for anything on the web. I have a few trusted sites I will deal with, as I feel I go at substantial risk to reveal bank codes and payment authorizations to a vendor. Knowing the abuse rampant on the net, I am even leery of revealing my name or email address, much less payment credentials.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess: such a system would gravitate toward the cable television model in North America. You pay for the cable, *and* you get to watch commercials. Never underestimate their desire for more money.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
But if such micropayments were automatic, then you can bet there'd be plenty of unscrupulous webmasters embedding thousands of 1x1 iFrames into their sites, Javascript auto-refreshes every couple of seconds, botnets and so on. It'd become more profitable to wring lots of loose change from unsuspecting web users than current phishing scams.
If you have to authorize micropayments to each website you read on a regular basis, then we're back to square one, and we already have systems like the PayPal Donate button or the Amazon Tip Jar in place.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure advertising is "evil,"
It doesn't have to be evil to be bad.
Instead of binary good or evil questions, we should be asking if it's in the public interest
and whether or not the benefits outweight the negatives.
Don't forget that advertising is commercial speech, which can be limited.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
we should be asking if it's in the public interest
This is a nitpick, but I'd rather ask if it's in any individual's interest.
I like to differentiate between "marketing" and "advertising." If you'll bare with me for one second: marketing, as I see it, is about trying to develop relationships with customers, present or potential, and provide them a solution to a problem they have. Advertising is one single tool that can be used as part of a marketing campaign.
As long as there is more than a single monopoly providing a given good or service then individuals really do need a way to become informed about alternatives and make decisions. I think that's where marketing comes in. And it doesn't have to be the company jumping in front of you, interrupting what you're trying to do in an attempt to get your attention. If you are, for example, shopping for a laptop you might ask your friends. If they have had a good experience with a given company, that's a form of marketing (marketing isn't trying to make a sale, it's trying to keep customers as well and get them to speak highly about their experiences). If you google "laptops" and read user reviews, maybe even go to a consumer review site, that's also marketing. And a good consumer review site will realize that people are there looking to buy things and instead of shoving ads in their face, will provide affiliate links in appropriate places so when someone decides to check out, say, "Dell Computers" the link they click on will provide a track-back to the consumer review site and the user will never think that they've just earned someone some ad revenue.
I think there are a lot of crappy ads out there and companies that haven't the first clue how to market properly. I also think that advertising is necessary and "good." And us having this debate right now, and using ad block software etc. is also a "good thing" because it's how our opinions get shoved in the faces of advertisers. The good marketers will take notice and respond. They'll realize that making people happy in some way is the whole point of a business and that marketing is about informing choices. Not informing people who don't care, but people who are actively seeking that information.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Funny)
If you'll bare with me for one second
I'll keep my trousers on for now, if you don't mind.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, there's a marketing aspect that's definitely not in my best interest, and that is google analytics and other trackers. Combined with data from shopping.com, or any participating merchant site, It can tell a marketer not only what I bought and how much I paid for it, but more importantly which sites I went to before I pulled the trigger. It can tell them exactly what searches and browsing patterns led me to this decision. If I searched for "water heater 50 gallon warranty sucks forum", attempting to find out what people think when they have warranty troubles, then read waterHeaterReviews.com they'll happily sell that data to an SEO marketer who then salts the top listed forums with shills posting useless crap like "My 50 gallon WetWillie 2000 water heater has a great warranty, and it doesn't suck." It poisons my ability to do a search I can trust to be somewhat independent of the planted lies.
So I use NoScript, Ghostery, and AdBlock Plus to block scripts, trackers, social networking links, flash, and ads which all serve the same purpose of assisting marketers to anticipate my moves. I won't even consider IE or Chrome, as neither offers effective privacy extensions. And I've even stopped using Google as my primary search engine, instead preferring duckduckgo.com. As far as I can tell they're trying to be honest, which sadly isn't saying much. But at least they're not Google.
I used to care more about denying ad revenue to sites, but I got over it once crap like XSS and CSRF attacks started trickling through advertisers on otherwise respectable sites. Do I feel guilty? Well, I still tithe Slashdot a few times a year. I'll click on Amazon referrer links to buy books from authors I like. And I do not install ad blockers for anyone else, nor do I tell non-technical people how to do it. They can do all the monkey punching they want, go support the ad bandits, do whatever. I'll happily let them foot the bills I am no longer willing to pay.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a few things it would be nice for Google to remember
-review -expertsexchange -directory ...
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
All life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light would be bad.
Re: (Score:3)
All life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light would be bad.
How so? I'm pretty sure that no-one I know would be even slightly bothered by such an event.
Technically bad, and evil censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern advertising is verging on evil. It's using more and more sophisticated psychological tools to manipulate masses of people into doing things detrimental to themselves and their loved ones.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Funny)
What are you talking about? Modern advertising is nothing more sophisticated than [SMOKE!] the use of techniques that have existed for yes. The only difference [SMMOOOOKKKEE!] is that they're somewhat more refined and widespread now thanks to technology [ARE YOU SMOKING YET?]
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Funny)
Damn I need a smoke.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Interesting)
In my opinion, I think advertisers (and other personal data-gathering companies) need to be more transparent and open about what info they collect.
What I want:
- Let me know EXACTLY what you collect about me.
- Let me choose what you collect.
- Let me know how you process that data (e.g. if you use my data for personality tests and such that tells you more about me than I've told you myself, and what you learn about me this way).
- Let me have you delete my personal data at anytime after you have collected it.
- Let me know who you share all that data with.
- Let me make you not share my data with specific groups, people and companies.
Advertisers could set up a website where we volunteer personal data and retain full control over it. Targeted advertising can be good for customers, hey I'd love to know about products that might interest me. The issue is the control I retain over my data.
But somehow, advertisers collect data about us behind our backs and work hard to keep us from knowing about it - this is suspicious. They can claim targeted advertising is good for us, and done properly I'm sure it is, but as long as they refuse to be open and co-operate with the customers then I will doubt that they really have our best interests in mind.
Now what does this have to do with Ad Block?
I realize websites rely on ads to keep running and I want to help. However, the way advertising is done right now, it does not satisfy me at all.
I could suck it up and unblock ads anyway, for the sake of the websites I like, but that will never solve the problem. On the other hand, if enough people block ads, advertisers will be forced to change their methods. And the innocent websites who suffer while we block ads? Well they should be pushing for advertisers to be more transparent.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
If sites need advertising dollars, let me just run a bot that keeps clicking that ad 24/7.
Back in the day, that's how a lot of sites made money.
If you want me to read the ad -
Don't make it move
Don't make it flash
Don't make it obnoxious and obvious
Don't play a sound
Don't make it a clickthru
Don't Block Content until the ad is done
Allow a video choice
Allow a bypass choice
Do not open pop ups, Pop unders
Do not stay frozen on a page while you scroll
(list goes on for another 1000 things advertisers have done to force me to adblock)
And finally, nothing is stopping the poor sod who is upset about adblocking everything and writing a check to the web site and popping it off in the mail.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally agreed.
Over the years I now and then upgraded my system, getting a cleanly installed OS, with an extension-less Firefox.
Pop-ups/unders are nicely taken care of by FF and are not an issue. The somewhat sensible pop-ups (link that legitimately opens a new window) are pushed into tabs, and that's fine.
Yet it's the ads that always make me install FlashBlock very soon. Flashing, jumping, hovering over content (those are maybe even the worst): they irritate me, they distract me from reading the actual content, sometimes make it near impossible due to being so distracting flashing or moving around and blocking text that I want to read. Get rid of those Flash ads and my life improves a lot. And no I'm not going to uninstall Flash as too many sites depend on it, and I don't want to mess around with workarounds to watch a YouTube video or so.
FlashBlock is mostly enough, it blocks the vast majority of irritations.
Though when I'm busy installing extensions, I'll get ABP too. Unfortunately it has no general option of "allow non-intrusive ads" that I know of. Static images or text ads, those are OK. OTOH I don't exactly miss them either, so I can't be bothered too much.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're subscribing to /. then?
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Informative)
So you're subscribing to /. then?
I'm not, but Slashdot gave me a little checkbox to hide the ads anyway :)
I don't know what all the fuss is about. Advertising is a perfectly legitimate way to fund a site if there is no other way. People will grumble about having to view ads, but most will flatly refuse to pay even a few dollars to fund the site.
It does go too far sometimes though. I've had friends complain that they mentioned the word "diet" on a (seemingly) unrelated forum and then suddenly facebook is bombarding them with weight loss products. Targeted advertising should at least have the decency to be sneaky, not obvious. I use adblock though and have never, ever, seen an ad on Facebook. I started using adblock when all the ads made my dialup connection too slow, and have never bothered turning it off even though i'm on a much faster connection now.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
So are you a slashdot subscriber? It's easy to subscribe and as a subscriber you'll see no ads. Do you put your money where your mouth is, or do you block ads and let other people view them and pay for the sites you use?
I fail to see what the big deal is about standard banner and text ads. The most annnoying ads are the ones that take over the browser window and you have to click to dismiss them, I rarely go back to sites that have those. I block all flash (not just ads) because flash is annoying, but I do
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Advertising is evil
That's a significant overreach, you can't know to buy a product without some advertising to tell you it exists.
But if an ad is worth hosting, you can host it yourself, not have some 3rd party ad company do it for you, that's rife for abuse. If you want to have advertising on www.slashdot.org you can host the images text etc. on slashdot.org servers, and that means I hold you responsible for those ads. If they're sketchy, have pop ups or whatever, you approved it, you host it, it's on you. If some compan
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a claim that can withstand much scrutiny. It's simply, comprehensively, untrue.
People can, and routinely do, live perfectly well without any advertizing at all. They buy things they need, having noticed a need for something. It's rarely in their interest to buy something merely because some stranger happens to tell them that they need it.
If I need groceries, I know how to visit a grocery store. If I need a box of M10x40 socket head cap screws in type 316 stainless steel, I'll go to a fastener store. From the mundane to the exotic, it's simply not a problem. No advertizing is required.
My two cents... (Score:5, Insightful)
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/
Re:My two cents... (Score:5, Interesting)
Adblock is good for blocking annoying site headers or site images and to block the remote advertisers that it comes with by default in the subscription.
I rarely block ads that adblock doesn't catch (such as those hosted on the same server as the website) unless it is a cycle-stealing piece of shi^H^H^Hflash.
Re:My two cents... (Score:5, Insightful)
Adblock normally only blocks ads that are pulled in externally. If your favorite website wants to show an image from its own server with a link underneath then Adblock probably won't touch it.
I'd say Adblock is only blocking the ads that need blocking - the sort of ads which turn decent sites into whores.
Re:My two cents... (Score:4, Insightful)
/. already has an option to not view ad's
i have ad block disabled on this site ( and ars tech ) /.
no-script is even allowing on
personal opinion in to allow the TOP level domain ONLY
if an add wants to run a script -- NO WAY
Re:My two cents... (Score:4, Insightful)
personal opinion in to allow the TOP level domain ONLY if an add wants to run a script -- NO WAY
Too many (legitimate) sites use 3rd party domain to process what you need (hotel booking, payment processing, etc.)
And if I want the service of the website, I need to play the guessing game of which domain besides the top-level one actually needs to run a script...
Re:My two cents... (Score:4, Interesting)
Did people who bought refridgerators hurt the ice men?
Just because somebody comes up with a scheme for monetizing what he does, which is based on what he expects me to do, doesn't mean I am somehow required to do what he expects me to do.
Its up to my browser how a page is rendered, what elements get loaded, what don't, what the format is. That was the agreement from day 1 on the web. Its how the entire client-server model works. They exchange data, and either side does with it as he pleases.
Advertising is based on commonly correct, but utterly unfounded ideas about how clients will render websites, including that they will load just anything they are pointed to. Clearly a falsehood, in this day.
Its wrong to conflate liking someoneone or liking what they do, with having some obligation to help them do it in the way that they want. Maybe my business model is to hand out free roses to people by the side of the road, in exchange for which I expect people to freely donate to me all of their worldly wealth and posessions. Will you comply with my expectation just because I handed you a flower?
Why is that absurd but its not absurd to think you can continually give people content they don't want, and expect them to look at it? Would we say the same about the people who skip the ads in the newspaper? Or people who use the grocery circulars that are mailed to them to line bird cages instead of reading them?
These people have decided to fund themselves based on unwarranted assumptions.... then complain when their assumption doesn't pan out.
Personally tho...I don't block ads execpt what noscript + requestpolicy blocks (which is alot) but, when i see ads, I take a whole different take. I figure, I should click on the ads I don't like...that way the people running them get to pay more to support the sites that i like....
Then they target me for more ads that offend me.... more clicks...more support. Support Obama? Click! Support Romney? Click.
Re:My two cents... (Score:4, Interesting)
> Silly analogy.
Care to explain why? It was intended to be silly, because it illustrates the point. If you give something away for free, you relinquish any and all control over what a person does with it, and leave them free to do what they want, which may be benficial to you, or not. I see no reason why this should suddenly be different online.
Furthermore, its only a slight exageration. There is, in fact, a woman near us who sits by the train station offering up roses and asking for donations. My wife took a rose and dropped a $5 in the donation box, to which the woman had the gall to reply "Don't you have a twenty?"
> As part of the tacit agreement you make as a reader
Tacit agreement? What are the terms of this tacit agreement? So if a site has no ads today, and I seek it out tomorow, does that mean they have changed the agreement?
Thats the probolem with implied agreements, anybody can claim they exist and claim what their terms are. Sounds entirely unreasonable to me. Just because they based their business model on unwarranted assumptions about what my client, running on my machine would do with their data.
Certainly, implied agreement makes sense in many case. If I go to a resteraunt and order food, I am agreeing to pay the price on the menu. If I make a doctors appointment, i am agreeing to pay his fees for said appointment.
This is no such thing... a website may or may not link elsewhere, may or may not get paid for some of those links depending on technical details of how they load etc. I have no way of knowing, before I request it, where it is linking, what data it is going to ask me to send to whom, whether the people I am sending it to are tracking me etc.
On top of that, there are already several EXPLICIT agreements, known as RFCs. They indicate how data is sent, the format of the data, etc. Its pretty clear from the explicit agreements that the browser is responsible for the rendering, and for deciding what elements to render and how to render them.
I say those explicit agreements trump any implict ones, especially when those implicit ones ask for nearly unlimited trust.
> It is technically possible for me to obtain and use your credit card information for my own benefit. Is
> it legal? Is it ethical? Absolutely not.
And you say my analogy is silly.... what does downloading and rendering of publically available information have to do with obtaining access to privileged information that you are not authorised to have?
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Informative)
You may be buying the products, but that doesn't mean the web sites are receiving any revenue. Google ads and many others often only pay when clicked.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4)
The most difficult thing to get in a business is clientele. If you have clientele in the hundreds of thousands per day or more and you can't find a way to make even a couple of bucks a month then you need to put the keyboard down and sell the place.
Sell a T-Shirt and maybe sweeten the deal by offering a free coffee or NFC related payment towards a beverage on a specific day of the month if they show up wearing your swag. Maybe offer a shiny gold star beside the username of a paying customer. Really do what ever you want, that's the whole idea.
But if you are going to give you clientele crap for avoiding a tactic (such as AD based rev) then you will definitely get what you truly deserve.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Interesting)
"Sites with less obtrusive or blatant ads will be more likely to get my business. If sites don't want me to visit with Adblock turned on, I won't visit. "
So less obtrusive or blatant ads don't matter at all. You seem to block everything, regardless.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
1. users brought their bandwidth. you brought yours. the users are not required to pay for yours too. they are not required to ensure you make money either.
2. because when you put content up on a publicly accessible server, by default you've given permission for people to pull data from it.. Once that data enters their computers, you have no say in what happens. The internet is not cable television no matter how hard marketing droids try to make it that way. It's a good thing, really.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Informative)
Either way, you're getting some benefit (i.e. viewing a website) without paying for it. How is that not stealing?
It's not stealing because the provider of that website provides that benefit to me without requesting payment. There is no contract, either explicit or implied, that requires me to watch ads in exchange for the benefit provided.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way you are talking about someone's business model. A model I don't have to support. They HOPE I'll view the ad, they HOPE I'll click on it, or just glance at it or whatever. So what? I control what my browser displays. I control what gets downloaded to my computer. I control the size of the font, whether pictures are displayed, what color everything is in. I control all of it. And their BUSINESS MODEL is that they HOPE I'll see their shit. That is a piece of shit BUSINESS MODEL that I DON"T HAVE TO PARTICIPATE IN. AT ALL. EVER. They don't like it, they are free to try something else to get my attention, or try someone else, or ban me from their website, or whatever they might think of to make money. But they can't force me to download their shit if I don't want to.
But you are participating in it -- Slashdot is one of those sites that has the annoying advertiser supported business model. I don't know their subscriber rates but I can't imagine it's very high. Are you a Slashdot subscriber? It only costs half a cent per page to subscribe and you don't need to see any ads, but you can still support the site. Do you?
Why the fuck do you care about someone else's business model? Isn't this Slashdot? Screw the buggy whip manufacturers, and the RIAA middle men and all that? I do not give a shit about advertisers. If they can't survive, and the website closes down, I AM FINE WITH THAT. I am stealing nothing. Fuck them if they can't take it.
I care because I like having just about every site on the internet provide content for "free". I don't see any other way for so many sites to provide such content without advertising. I certainly don't want to have to set up a page-view account and have my account balance dinged half a cent for every page view.
If you're so fine with the website shutting down because you don't care about how they make money, why do you visit them at all? If you know a website relies on a business model that you don't approve of and you really don't care if they shut down, why don't you just stop visiting that site?
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Insightful)
People are not obligated to make you money. They brought their bandwidth and you brought yours.. They pay for their bandwidth.. You pay for yours.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Advertising isn't evil
Yes, it is. The very definition of evil applies to advertising.
Advertising:
1) Uses deceit to further its own agenda.
2) Manipulates other people through lies and distortions of the truth.
Whatever you think is good about advertising, is not. It may have manipulated you into thinking it was valuable information, but the information it provides is never useful to an informed purchasing decision.
Do some people benefit? Sure. Just like Swiss bankers benefited from Nazi's stealing the wealth of the people they just abused and killed. Strong analogy I know, but apt. Just because a site benefits from it does not mean advertising has some sort of redeeming virtue because of it.
It is truly a disgusting, wasteful, and shameful blight on humanity at this point. The sooner we can move past such behaviors, the better.
You ever see a description of Utopia that included advertising? Yeah, me neither.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:4, Insightful)
How much do you really care for anything on the internet? For a lot of sites their value is in large number of user. Subscriptions or other form of payment can lead to drop in users thus loss in value.
This line of reasoning is a flavor of what I like to call the "RIAA fallacy"; if no one pays there will be no content. I doubt this, I've been on the Web (and general internet before that, and BBSs before that) for a long time, and most of that time was ad free. Sure, there was less stuff out there, but stuff was still out there. People who want to be heard will still produce content, and people who want something more will pay for it (even in highschool I threw money at "free" BBSs for perks, or just to promote the continued existence of my community). The internet pre-exists the advertising model.
Further, Your number 5 is a bit off. Not all sites are businesses. And many of them that are, can die, for all I care. I can live happily without Facebook, or Coke.com... If they want to survive they might have to mirror real businesses, and offer a product that is worth money. And, just to add some snark to the discussion; if people don't want to pay for it, was it really that important? Value is what I'm willing to pay, if I'm not willing, there is no value, and thus nothing of value was lost.
This also points to the fact (Kant be damned), that even if I completely block all ads and trackers there still will be enough people who don't to keep things running. Sure, there might be less eye-ball money floating around, but things will tick on without me being forced to contend with all the problems of ads. If your product isn't good enough to have been recommended to me by live people who had positive experiences, I probably don't want it. As such, I'm not even hurting people, since I wouldn't buy your product anyways, in fact advertisement makes me hostile to your brand.
Re:Just block all ads and don't worry about it (Score:5, Insightful)
When did advertising suddenly become evil, after 300+ years of being the main revenue source for most media?
It was not sudden. Advertising has always been evil. In fact, it was much less evil for awhile with all the restrictive laws we put in place that governed what advertisers could actually say. Now advertisers are hell bent on destroying whatever shred of privacy we had left for the "big data" quest.
There is nothing about advertising that is truthful. It is all deception and manipulation, and quite frankly, at this point in affront to any intelligent human being.
So people like you need to rationalize their selfish behavior, and invented a new, not very logical, moral model.
Utter bullshit.
I am either receiving the content for free, or I have purchased a license to the content, or I am viewing it with somebody who has. There is nothing, ever, that has constrained me with how I choose to view the content . Nothing in society, or copyright law, has ever, not once, not even for a minute, obligated me to watch the commercials.
It's not selfish. I don't want to see that fucking crap, so I am not going to. Simple as that. What next? I might as well be killing babies because I will never click on an advertisement?
Mind you, I'd love to see content providers start relying on payments from readers
Now that is the only sensible and worthwhile thing you have said. My subscription to Slashdot is not current, but I have had a few. Penny Arcade recently did something on Kickstarter to be advertisement free for a year as one of the goals. Was too late for it, but I do support Penny Arcade with some merch here and there.
I also hope for different models that allow us as society to move back to a more patronage type model to support content producers directly. Fuck the middle men. They demand unreasonable prices and use the insane amounts of money and power they have to influence laws that are just horrible for society to unjustly enrich themselves.
BTW, the only reason ad-blocking even works is that only a few techies know how to do it
Wrong. There are plenty of people that only knew how to search for an extension called Adblock and install it. You don't have to be a techie anymore to do it.
As for content providers that do block me, I just ignore them. CNN videos is a good example, as well as Hulu. Fine, I get my content elsewhere. 99% of everything on CNN can be found with a quick search elsewhere, and Hulu has too many advertisements as it is. Might as well be a cable subscription.
when technology started making it easy for people to rip off content
That sounds an awful lot like saying it was stolen, which again, means that is bullshit. You can't steal content, and in your case, you really just mean the content was not consumed in the exact manner you wished for. Which, that is deeply unethical and immoral. If you also feel that way and want to push for technology and laws to force me, then you are the true enemy of society.
You are fighting a losing battle. Other than a few, sparse, very sparse, edge cases, nobody wants advertising. Gee... I wonder why. Perhaps because most people realize that they are an insult to their intelligence and a waste of their time because they impart nothing useful and only seek to manipulate them?
It's illogical and immoral to skip past that stuff huh?
I just block (Score:4, Insightful)
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&
Re:I just block (Score:5, Insightful)
Here on Slashdot, we have the alternative option to give our own contributions + good behavior, measured in the form of karma. That doesn't work on all sites, though, and even Slashdot would be unsustainable if no one viewed the ads; the only reason their model is sustainable is because positive-karma contributions presumably increase the value of the site, thus increasing its viewership, thus increasing the total number of ad-views enough to keep the site afloat. If everyone on the Internet adblocked, Slashdot would lose that revenue stream.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. If you don't want to be profiled by having your online behavior tracked, and you don't want to pay for the product (see outrage over NYT paywall), and you don't want to view ads... what of similar value would you prefer to give?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
"Things of value require money, and money has to come from somewhere. Are you really saying you would prefer to pay for content directly, rather than to have an unobtrusive and moderately relevant ad that you can easily ignore?"
Absolutely. If we all just paid for things that are currently ad supported, and got rid of all the gratuitous advertising, EVERYTHING would be cheaper, we'd all come out ahead, and all the people wasting their lives trying to manipulate us into buying things could do something usefu
Re:I just block (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse than that - Advertising motivates me to make a point of never buying it. Ads absolutely infuriate me, the less obtrusive ones, less so.
If you find a magic formula to get my attention with an ad, congratulations, you have just lost me as a customer forever.
I block ads because they waste my, and the sites, bandwidth. I have zero chance of ever clicking an ad, or buying a product based on "impressions".
Don't like it? Go bankrupt. Because realistically, those describe your two choices - Accept that some fraction of people will block your ads no matter what, or stop producing content and let someone else fill your niche.
And in case you wonder - Nope, I don't feel "bad" about this. If Slashdot vanished tomorrow, another "news for nerds" site would take its place overnight.
Re: (Score:3)
Why?
You've got proof that you can't make any money aggregating "news for nerds". So why on earth would someone create a new one?
Hey....that comic book store just went out of business....clearly we need to rent the space and open a comic book store!!!
Re:I just block (Score:4, Insightful)
You've got proof that you can't make any money aggregating "news for nerds". So why on earth would someone create a new one?
There was an internet before the ad infestation. If people have something to say, they will say it.
As I pointed out earlier in this topic, this is what I call the RIAA Fallacy; the false idea that if no one pays there will be no content. Luckily there was content before ads, and luckily there was music before albums and labels.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not going to click on the ad, so why would I want it displayed? If I want a product, I can search for it.
Adblock stops me getting annoyed by unwanted material. If someone loses because of that, they might want to pay-per-click instead of pay-per-serve?
Re:I just block (Score:4, Insightful)
If I want a product, I can search for it
Earlier this summer I saw an ad for a "Thomas and Friends" train ride in a town an hour from here. Took my kids, they loved it. It was fun. How the smeg would I have even known about it without having seen an ad? You suggesting I should have randomly searched and spontaneously discovered it?
Re:I just block (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who's created (and supported) several websites (and developed a few platforms)...I'd just like to say that by no means would the world wide web and some of the wonderful technologies we have today disappear in the absence of ad based monetization. It might look different, but I see no reason to suspect that commoditization is tied to creative innovation.
Carry on.
Re: (Score:3)
must get and use a credit card because that's the way banks make money
another way to make money or be gone....same for the web sites that use it.
That was some good crazy. In 1.5 lines you went from saying a company can only have one business model, to saying if a current business model isn't working creative people will find a new one.
If you want banks to exist, which despite the present circumstance, we do, then you need to provide them a viable business model. We could simply require that in exchange for storing peoples money "banks" get a monopoly on strippers, and so they make money on strippers but provide the service of storing money. I can
Everything (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Everything (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't care if AdBlock destroys the Internet as we know it."
For the first few years that I was on the Internet, I never saw an ad. That's because _There weren't any ads_!
Now I AdBlock, Flashblock and do whatever it takes to keep me from looking at ads. If ads went away, and we lost Slashdot, TheRegister, the IMDB... well not much would be lost in the Grand Scheme Of Things. If the Internet shrank to 1% of it's present size because of a lack of advertising, it would be a much more pleasant place. I would still get my literature, my Fine Art pix, my music, just as I did over 20 years ago. From sites run by enthusiastic, decent, intelligent volunteers. (Well, decent except for the Fine Art bits...) After all, enthusiastic, decent, intelligent volunteers created the Internet in the first place.
Advertising just appeals to the stupid, and the even more stupid who actually base purchasing decisions based on ads.
Re:Everything (Score:5, Interesting)
Way back in the day, some legitimate companies tried to use newsgroups to advertise. It did not go so well. They underestimated the concept of unmoderated uncontrollable feedback.
About the OP question, should he unblock ads from companies he likes, my answer is no, cut out the middle man and just buy their products. Seeing their ads means nothing to them if you are not actually buying their products.
Re: (Score:3)
Two, I dislike business models that are based on ads.
Therefore, you routinely visit websites whose business models are based on ads?
Re:Everything (Score:5, Interesting)
So what's the business model you'd prefer then?
I personally have a Web site where I sell a commercial product and where I offer free products (GPL designs.) There are no ads on my Web site, and no trackers (except Google Analytics ... I guess I should remove that.)
Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
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
No bad conscience (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like I would ever click one of those ads anyway.
Re:No bad conscience (Score:5, Interesting)
We run a website about video games. 100% of our revenue comes from online advertising. From our statistics when using Google AdWords, somewhere between 1-3% of users on a typical day will click on an ad.
Just like spam, there is a tiny percentage of people that do see some value in whatever is put in front of their face. There's this overwhelming trend on Slashdot that goes "well, I've never clicked on an ad, therefore, noone else has". People click on ads. People buy products based on ad clicks. This is how Google make money. This is how Google's ad customers sell products.
Just because you don't click on an ad - IMHO - doesn't mean you should just block all ads for ever. Small sites like us that work really hard to provide useful content and services that depend on advertising depend on these ad delivery numbers to drive ad sales and generate revenue.
Why haven't we got a system where people can pay to opt out? Well, we're working on that. But I want to keep the website free. I think the tradeoff - a few hundred milliseconds of page load time, a few hundred KB of bandwidth, plus maybe the tiniest percentage of your attention possible (maybe even zero) means we can continue to deliver stuff to you and other users, for free.
Re:Irrelevent (Score:4, Interesting)
the issue is not the ads... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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...
Re:the issue is not the ads... (Score:5, Informative)
You may be interested in Flattr [flattr.com].
I Don't Block Anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
On my website I run Google text ads. They (Google) keep suggesting that I upgrade to what they call "rich media ads", which I'm pretty sure are exactly what you're describing. But since I don't like to see them myself, I don't want my website visitors to be subjected to them.
Sort of an odd spin on the Golden Rule, I guess.
And to reply to an earlier question... websites running ads don't get paid for your eyeballs - they only get paid if you click on an ad.
Animation and annoyance (Score:3)
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.
Ads are for the lazy and ignorant (Score:3)
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 do advertisers a favour by blocking adverts (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
anyone who says blocking ads is stealing... (Score:5, Insightful)
TOASTY (Score:4, Insightful)
When Flash, and flash based advertisements, stop turning my MBP into a toaster. i'll turn off AdBlock.
The End.
Don't block (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Why bother? (Score:3)
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?
not a question (Score:5, Insightful)
(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?"
The birds and the bees (Score:5, Interesting)
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.)
Re:The birds and the bees (Score:5, Funny)
(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.)
I dont get it. Which one is the car?
meh (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The Best Advertising... (Score:5, Interesting)
... 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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
What sort of disclosure do you display on this sponsored content? Are users clearly informed they're ads? This suggests not:
...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.
As long as I'm told that certain content has an agenda, I agree that a coherent article or whitepaper is a much better ad than a banner.
The problem is that if I know it's an ad, I may as well read it on the company's own website, which I can be made aware of through a search engine ad or organic result (which requires me to be actively looking, and only search engines get paid),
Re: (Score:3)
What sort of disclosure do you display on this sponsored content? Are users clearly informed they're ads? This suggests not:
I was intentionally vague, because I'm not here to pitch my web-site or talk about what I do etc. But you did hit on something:
Much better would be if I could learn about things through unbiased content written by you and your users, and you get paid through affiliate-like mechanisms.
That's a pretty accurate description of what I do. I don't work for anyone or promote one given company. The ads that people are there to see is the content of the site, and it is a subset of what it's trying to sell. But you can't get it on the "manufacturer's" web-site without paying for it. My site provides free samples. Think of people who might go to Costco on Friday just for t
And then there's my theory (Score:5, Insightful)
I've almost got all of hulu's ad servers blotted out. And then for standard web browsing I use AdBlock Plus.
Adblock Plus (Score:3)
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.
When they deserve your trust. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
will (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
An intermediate position (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [adlimiter.com], 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.
Default is block 'em all (Score:3)
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.
Re:Blocking ads is hypocritical (Score:5, Insightful)
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.