Comments on: Is Ad Blocking Ethical? http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/ Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:59:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: alex cornivus http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-9959 alex cornivus Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:11:46 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-9959 I don't count blocking online ads as much of a sin, but I don't see how you could defend it. And, personally, I wouldn't want to the web currently makes a remarkable range of free resources available to you and me. I don’t count blocking online ads as much of a sin, but I don’t see how you could defend it. And, personally, I wouldn’t want to the web currently makes a remarkable range of free resources available to you and me.

]]> By: Sam http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-7912 Sam Sat, 18 Nov 2006 17:25:01 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-7912 "I pay for my internet access, it’s my computer, I should be able to decide what uses my bandwidth and gets displayed on my computer. I don’t want to see ads." This I totally agree with. Whatever the view of the webmaster or advertiser, I pay for x amount of bandwidth each month and dont want to waste any of it on unsolicited advertising for products I will likely never purchase. “I pay for my internet access, it’s my computer, I should be able to decide what uses my bandwidth and gets displayed on my computer. I don’t want to see ads.”

This I totally agree with. Whatever the view of the webmaster or advertiser, I pay for x amount of bandwidth each month and dont want to waste any of it on unsolicited advertising for products I will likely never purchase.

]]> By: PrejudicedOne http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-7840 PrejudicedOne Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:36:37 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-7840 IMO even if all the "bad" ads disappear right now people will not regain trust for the good ones for years. Too much damage is done, too many people don't realise that ads pay for free Internet. In this discussion on ethics - adblocks are a form of self defense. Defend our time, browsing experience, data - ethics come in only after those are secured. IMO even if all the “bad” ads disappear right now people will not regain trust for the good ones for years. Too much damage is done, too many people don’t realise that ads pay for free Internet. In this discussion on ethics – adblocks are a form of self defense. Defend our time, browsing experience, data – ethics come in only after those are secured.

]]> By: PrejudicedOne http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-7837 PrejudicedOne Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:35:20 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-7837 GOOGLE it up n00b... Internet is your friend when it comes to getting information. But now I use Firefox and enter everything i am googling into it's quick search - almost all the pages I open contain ads and I can't see the info I'm searching right away. So I let firefox find me again what I entered in google. Ads no doubt obstruct browsing experience and actually today they do it less than some 6 years ago (IMHO). I work at a company that is a reseller of software that blocks ads and spam at a corporate gateway level. Nice stuff: white lists black lists heuristic scans content filtering. And I think that this is how it will remain in the future - ad blocking software will not back down from it's current level of intrusion into users' browsing experience. Because users on the most part will remain in the dark that this software cuts some potentially useful information for them (when we advertise our software we never mention that this risk is a possibility - only that white lists exist and what they are for). And they will gladly pay money for the service that this software provides: "safe" browsing. Because time is money - and ads consume time and can potentially lead to spyware and viruses on your computer that might render your PC inoperable - even more time! So we sell the whole solution: one sw for viruses, one for ads, one for spam, one for spyware and if all that fails and your PC went permanently down then our other software will reinstall your OS in minutes register within our network and other sw will take all your personal backuped data from a safe storage and put it back to your PC - in just 10 minutes you are working again. All that we call a security suite - and that costs a lot and consumes quite a bit of PC resources but people are happy with it and pay it's cost. People will not care more for poor webmasters than for them selfs and will pay money to block ads than pay money for those ads to disappear because in that case hey are the ones that are reaping the benefits - it's a feeling of money spent not in vain. Also from my experience: on windows 98 without ad blocking system you could encounter a popup that would open IE in full screen mode without a close button or upto infinity of new windows from just clicking on an ad. Win 98 were long ago but even today if I encounter an ad that is relevant for my interests I will not click it subconsciously. The fart button is probably the best example of my phobia - it is the most compelling ad to click at. Maybe some psychologists were involved in the creation of that ad. Whenever I see it I want to push it: a big bright red button (that is the brightest thing in the ad) an George Bush under it - with his rating no wonder he is in there. But I never clicked that ad or any other lately. Because from the beginning of my browsing experience 10 years ago I have created such a prejudice about ads: they will interfere with your browsing, if you click them you run a risk of corrupting your OS. So even if I see an ad that is relevant to my interests I will not click it but instead google everything it promises. I am not the only one that thinks this way - every customer that uses Internet and whom we presented our software agreed that browsing is not safe. You don't need to browse p0rn sites to get spyware and viruses onto your computer. That is the truth that everyone knows of. Even old people who barely know how to use a PC know that because maybe at some point their PC was down and as they called in an' admin who said: "You've got a virus", "From where?", "From Internet", "What was I doing wrong?", "You probably clicked on an malicious ad" GOOGLE it up n00b… Internet is your friend when it comes to getting information. But now I use Firefox and enter everything i am googling into it’s quick search – almost all the pages I open contain ads and I can’t see the info I’m searching right away. So I let firefox find me again what I entered in google. Ads no doubt obstruct browsing experience and actually today they do it less than some 6 years ago (IMHO). I work at a company that is a reseller of software that blocks ads and spam at a corporate gateway level. Nice stuff: white lists black lists heuristic scans content filtering. And I think that this is how it will remain in the future – ad blocking software will not back down from it’s current level of intrusion into users’ browsing experience. Because users on the most part will remain in the dark that this software cuts some potentially useful information for them (when we advertise our software we never mention that this risk is a possibility – only that white lists exist and what they are for). And they will gladly pay money for the service that this software provides: “safe” browsing. Because time is money – and ads consume time and can potentially lead to spyware and viruses on your computer that might render your PC inoperable – even more time! So we sell the whole solution: one sw for viruses, one for ads, one for spam, one for spyware and if all that fails and your PC went permanently down then our other software will reinstall your OS in minutes register within our network and other sw will take all your personal backuped data from a safe storage and put it back to your PC – in just 10 minutes you are working again. All that we call a security suite – and that costs a lot and consumes quite a bit of PC resources but people are happy with it and pay it’s cost. People will not care more for poor webmasters than for them selfs and will pay money to block ads than pay money for those ads to disappear because in that case hey are the ones that are reaping the benefits – it’s a feeling of money spent not in vain.

Also from my experience: on windows 98 without ad blocking system you could encounter a popup that would open IE in full screen mode without a close button or upto infinity of new windows from just clicking on an ad. Win 98 were long ago but even today if I encounter an ad that is relevant for my interests I will not click it subconsciously. The fart button is probably the best example of my phobia – it is the most compelling ad to click at. Maybe some psychologists were involved in the creation of that ad. Whenever I see it I want to push it: a big bright red button (that is the brightest thing in the ad) an George Bush under it – with his rating no wonder he is in there. But I never clicked that ad or any other lately. Because from the beginning of my browsing experience 10 years ago I have created such a prejudice about ads: they will interfere with your browsing, if you click them you run a risk of corrupting your OS. So even if I see an ad that is relevant to my interests I will not click it but instead google everything it promises.
I am not the only one that thinks this way – every customer that uses Internet and whom we presented our software agreed that browsing is not safe. You don’t need to browse p0rn sites to get spyware and viruses onto your computer. That is the truth that everyone knows of. Even old people who barely know how to use a PC know that because maybe at some point their PC was down and as they called in an’ admin who said: “You’ve got a virus”, “From where?”, “From Internet”, “What was I doing wrong?”, “You probably clicked on an malicious ad”

]]> By: PrejudicedOne http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-7836 PrejudicedOne Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:34:09 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-7836 GOOGLE it up n00b GOOGLE it up n00b

]]> By: zaphraud http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-5605 zaphraud Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:42:19 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-5605 Thiefware said: I remember reading that google text ads and other affiliate referral text ads were also being blocked. That’s way overboard. Responce: If its on an affiliate site, it can't possibly be a text ad.. unless the site being viewed is loading it before passing it back to the viewer, which I have never heard of being the case. Text ads are.. TEXT. Included in the actual HTML of the site being viewed. Not IFRAMEs, not JavaScript, and not AJAX. Even if these techniques end up rendering text, these are NOT true text-based ads because they enable intrusive cross-site tracking via the abuse of cookies stored on the users machine and/or the correlation of IP addresses and REFERer tags. I view Google's text ads at only one time, when I visit Google's website. Since I have not yet had a reason to visit Googlesyndication.com, yet that website turns up over and over again in the logs, it is most definitely blocked. So is the javascript urchin. I have no interest in urchins. Thiefware said: I remember reading that google text ads and other affiliate referral text ads were also being blocked. That’s way overboard.

Responce:
If its on an affiliate site, it can’t possibly be a text ad.. unless the site being viewed is loading it before passing it back to the viewer, which I have never heard of being the case. Text ads are.. TEXT. Included in the actual HTML of the site being viewed.

Not IFRAMEs, not JavaScript, and not AJAX. Even if these techniques end up rendering text, these are NOT true text-based ads because they enable intrusive cross-site tracking via the abuse of cookies stored on the users machine and/or the correlation of IP addresses and REFERer tags.

I view Google’s text ads at only one time, when I visit Google’s website. Since I have not yet had a reason to visit Googlesyndication.com, yet that website turns up over and over again in the logs, it is most definitely blocked. So is the javascript urchin. I have no interest in urchins.

]]> By: zaphraud http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-5603 zaphraud Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:16:18 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-5603 I am *not* a user of adblock plus. I use adblock with near religious fervor, however. I have ADHD, I think of it as a fair accomodation. Companies spend thousands to billions of dollars with the goal of making my problem -that of being distracted- worse for no reason other than raw greed. Sorry, no sympathy there whatsoever. the ALT tag for images has been a part of the HTML standard for as long as images have been allowed on web pages. If people advertizing can't be bothered to take the time to type up some text to display if the image doesn't load, f*** 'em. Besides: 1. The blind ought to be able to find out what they are missing with reading software, should they choose to do so. No alt tag? Insensitive. 2. Its not unethical to save bandwidth by not loading discrete URLs. Actually altering the content of an individual URL (such as with adblock plus) presents a whole other batch of ethical problems. 3. I also block all those damn counters trackers and stats pages whenever I find them, so my effect is minimized. 4. I use adblock to eliminate crappy things on peoples MySpace pages, like absurd backgrounds, unwanted video or music, and anything from one of those f*ing "PIMPER" sites. Most of these are not ads, or if they are, are used in a non-direct way. I have nothing against the Coca Cola Bear, I love Coca Cola, its just that I can't read grey-white text on a Coca Cola Bear background, LOL I am *not* a user of adblock plus. I use adblock with near religious fervor, however.

I have ADHD, I think of it as a fair accomodation. Companies spend thousands to billions of dollars with the goal of making my problem -that of being distracted- worse for no reason other than raw greed. Sorry, no sympathy there whatsoever.

the ALT tag for images has been a part of the HTML standard for as long as images have been allowed on web pages. If people advertizing can’t be bothered to take the time to type up some text to display if the image doesn’t load, f*** ‘em.

Besides:
1. The blind ought to be able to find out what they are missing with reading software, should they choose to do so. No alt tag? Insensitive.
2. Its not unethical to save bandwidth by not loading discrete URLs. Actually altering the content of an individual URL (such as with adblock plus) presents a whole other batch of ethical problems.
3. I also block all those damn counters trackers and stats pages whenever I find them, so my effect is minimized.
4. I use adblock to eliminate crappy things on peoples MySpace pages, like absurd backgrounds, unwanted video or music, and anything from one of those f*ing “PIMPER” sites. Most of these are not ads, or if they are, are used in a non-direct way. I have nothing against the Coca Cola Bear, I love Coca Cola, its just that I can’t read grey-white text on a Coca Cola Bear background, LOL

]]> By: john03063 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-3940 john03063 Thu, 12 Oct 2006 02:44:19 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-3940 As soon as the site operators start paying me to look at the ads, I will stop using blocking software. The internet is the only advertising medium where I have to pay to be annoyed. I have no problem if the site operators want to restrict access because I don't look at the ads. I'll just take my business somewhere else. They want to use the web because it reaches a lot of potential customers quickly. They should pay for that luxury, not me. If they don't agree, they can go back to sending me junk mail, and I can go back to throwing it out. As soon as the site operators start paying me to look at the ads, I will stop using blocking software. The internet is the only advertising medium where I have to pay to be annoyed. I have no problem if the site operators want to restrict access because I don’t look at the ads. I’ll just take my business somewhere else. They want to use the web because it reaches a lot of potential customers quickly. They should pay for that luxury, not me. If they don’t agree, they can go back to sending me junk mail, and I can go back to throwing it out.

]]> By: Palehoof http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-3574 Palehoof Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:17:50 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-3574 I fast forward through the commercials on my DVR box, and I don't read the commercials in magazines I buy. I'm not just glad, but proud, to be able to do the same on the internet. "Unethical" is just a label applied by those who are losing money due to the behavior. I fast forward through the commercials on my DVR box, and I don’t read the commercials in magazines I buy. I’m not just glad, but proud, to be able to do the same on the internet.

“Unethical” is just a label applied by those who are losing money due to the behavior.

]]> By: santos http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-ethical/comment-page-1/#comment-3221 santos Wed, 16 Aug 2006 02:35:03 +0000 http://www.adblock.org/2006/02/is-ad-blocking-unethical/#comment-3221 phil: I don't have a TV, so I download all the shows I watch, so I never see TV ads (I hear you can do the same with tivo these days). When I want to read a journal or magazine article, I download it straight from the author or website, and read it that way. None of my chat clients or anything have ads, so why should I need to see them when I view webpages? The only thing I can't seem to filter is my postal mailbox, so I stopped checking it. What it comes down to for me is time. My time is very important to me. Big banner ads that flash or are distracting waste my time, so it is worth the time it takes to figure out a regex to filter ads from those servers. If the ad is not annoying, and does not waste my time, then it would be a waste of my time to come up with a regex to filter it. I know the things that I want, and I have alerts and rss feeds etc to tell me when they are available. I don't need some company telling me what to buy. As for the business model of : "Im going to make a blog, post complaints about computer things, spam the internet with links to my copy/pasted articles, and make a fortune off ad revenue!" .. I don't think it was a good idea to start with, and I am glad it isn't surviving the most recent technological advances. Any model based on antagonizing your target audience should fail. phil:

I don’t have a TV, so I download all the shows I watch, so I never see TV ads (I hear you can do the same with tivo these days). When I want to read a journal or magazine article, I download it straight from the author or website, and read it that way. None of my chat clients or anything have ads, so why should I need to see them when I view webpages? The only thing I can’t seem to filter is my postal mailbox, so I stopped checking it.

What it comes down to for me is time. My time is very important to me. Big banner ads that flash or are distracting waste my time, so it is worth the time it takes to figure out a regex to filter ads from those servers. If the ad is not annoying, and does not waste my time, then it would be a waste of my time to come up with a regex to filter it.

I know the things that I want, and I have alerts and rss feeds etc to tell me when they are available. I don’t need some company telling me what to buy.

As for the business model of : “Im going to make a blog, post complaints about computer things, spam the internet with links to my copy/pasted articles, and make a fortune off ad revenue!” ..
I don’t think it was a good idea to start with, and I am glad it isn’t surviving the most recent technological advances. Any model based on antagonizing your target audience should fail.

]]>