Is Ad Blocking Ethical?
Regardless of the actual topic of a post here on adblock.org, the comments typically devolve into a debate over the right to block ads.
So, let’s take the subject head on, shall we? Is the blocking of ads unethical?
I offer a service. I don’t sell a product. The only way I can get compensated for it is by advertising.
The user’s perspective. I’ve heard several:
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.
or
Ads have become horribly annoying. they flash, move, jitter, pop up, pop under. I can’t focus on the actual content that I’m reading.
or
The Internet should be free!
This website was first created to point out the problem of software developers (namely Symmantec) creating adblocking software as a virtually undocumented feature of
I have read that their more recent update to this software has ad blocking turned off by default, and when you go to enable it, it warns that it may make websites unusable. So good for them.
Why does adblocking software exist at all? It’s primarily based on demand from the annoyed Internet users (as opposed to the “free the Internet” radicals). Yes, some misguided advertisers ruined it (and continue to do so) with annoying ads and the response was for users to start using ad blocking software. Fair enough.
But has adblocking gone too far? Are filter lists too agressive? Is it really necessary to block every commercialized link just for the sake of doing so?
I think it has gone too far, especially in cases like Symmantec. Other tools like Adblock Plus with the third-party Filtset.G, block agressively as well and as users install this software without understanding the technical details of how they work, their Internet experience is at the mercy of the software developers who create the blocking software. And when acting from a perspective of “all commercial links must die”, it gets dangerous.
As I examine filters, I see that they tend to block not only the big banners, but smaller graphics, and even contextual text ads like Google Adsense.
By all means, block the annoying ones, or the ad networks that are responsible for the animated ads, or the ones that are so big they slow down your browsing.
But can’t there be a happy medium? Website owners should be able to earn a living. To visit their website, benefit from their hard work, while denying them a way to earn a living, I think, can be classified as unethical.
I’ll close with an interesting and telling note from the “Adblock team” on a Firefox Extensions message board referring to the hot-key feature to enable/disable the Adblock software in Firefox:
And, if an ethical urge should overwhelm, just tap the keys and Adblock toggles off — it’s that easy.
I guess that’s two votes for “unethical”.
February 24th, 2006 at 9:30 am
Thats no comment from the Adblock crew. This comment is from the maintainer of extensionmirror.nl
February 24th, 2006 at 9:44 am
I see, perhaps it is, yes. But a vote nonetheless.
March 1st, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Annoying is subjective - for instance, what is annoying to a commercial webmaster is obviously very different than what is annoying to me!
I find all advertising that isn’t at least 99.5% relevant to what I’m searching for to be annoying, which means -all- advertising, unless I’m specifically looking for it (like an ad for a CD on eBay). In the seven years that I used the internet before I started blocking all ads, I can count on one hand the number of commercial links, banners, or any other crappy ad that I was interested in enough to click - it’s just the plain and simple truth. Therefore, you can see why I’d find all advertising annoying, and block it. It’s a waste of my bandwidth - as well as a webmaster’s pagespace - to display advertising to me, because I’m just not interested in advertising.
Advertisers know that people hate their ads, yet they intentionally and purposefully try to circumvent software to display more ads - look at -any- affiliate, they have code that sits there and hammers IE’s popup blocker until one gets through. Advertisers have so completely abused Javascript that it’s become more useful to turn it off than to leave it running in a browser (unless you run an adblocker). Advertisers sure haven’t demonstrated any indication of good faith that would persuade me to NOT block their ads, so I don’t. Any webmaster who utilizes these ad networks is condoning their business practices, even if they claim not to. The long and short of it is that advertisers WILL NOT LEARN until adblocking at the domain and IP level becomes prolific, and then their only choice will be to close up shop, or to actually PAY ATTENTION TO THE END USER and tone down their crap.
Yes, it does hurt the webmaster. My suggestion for them is to drop all affiliate networks and forge their own advertising campaigns. Yes, it does take more work - but it ultimately serves their consumer base better - not to mention make it a lot harder to block ads for the die-hard ad blockers. *GASP*, yes, this does involve more work and commitment from the webmaster, but it also ensures that the really hard workers who deserve advertising revenue get it - and that all these other second-rate losers who throw a site up there with content stolen from wikipedia and Google Images drop out reee-eee-eeeeal quick!
The way I see it, throwing up a message board or giving me some shred of information I could’ve gleaned by clicking on the next link on Google isn’t reason enough to clutter my monitor and internet connection with whatever advertising rubbish you’ve got - only truly original, unique, and USEFUL content deserves even the slightest consideration from me, or anyone else who values their privacy and preferences. And where does that leave us…?
Whitelisting. And no, not a pre-built whitelist, but one that is easily user-configurable - and that’s just what Adblock+ offers. It allows you to whitelist any site you deem worthy of seeing advertising on.
March 2nd, 2006 at 1:04 am
You’ve touched on some of the problems of online advertising, but I think there are some things you’re missing as well.
It is true that some advertising isn’t annoying or intrusive… text ads from your favorite search engine/advertising company are a good example. They don’t waste much bandwidth, they don’t blink, twitch, or play streaming video when you move your mouse over them. They are trying to sell something, but that’s fine, you don’t have to click. Even some graphical ads aren’t bad… a static banner or two on a web page isn’t going to kill anyone.
The problems start coming when the advertisements begin to abuse the technology. Everyone who has surfed around more than a couple days has seen some version of the Punch the Monkey ad, or the neon green and pink flasher that tells of a prize won by being the millionth visitor to a page. These ads are garbage, but the content isn’t any worse than the banner ads. The problem here is that they’re running on the user’s machine… not only are they annoying, they take more bandwidth to load, they require processing at runtime, and they slow the overall browsing experience. If it’s unethical to block these ads, then it is also unethical for webmasters to get free processing time. Strangely, none of the pages that serve these ads post billing addresses so that webmasters can take the ethical step of paying their readers back for the computing time they’ve burned.
There are more serious problems: malicious advertisers can install spyware or viruses through advertising. It’s a known problem that’s been given plenty of press, and is still common. If malware is unethical (and I am making the assumption that this is agreed upon), then serving advertising that comes bundled with the malware is also unethical, and it is unreasonable to expect users not to protect their machines for the benefit of the webmasters serving the ads.
Social engineering attacks are also around… pop under advertisements that look like dialog boxes, and claim to have detected problems with the user’s machine are generally laughed at by the tech crowd, but they’ll fool the less savvy. Given that this style of advertising is directly aimed fooling the user into clicking through to something they almost never want, this sort of advertisement is also probably not completely ethical.
So, when faced with these significant problems, consumers (or companies that stand to gain from helping consumers) have found ways to deal with the internet that works for them. If a user blocks all advertisements, they never end up with one that installs something behind the scenes, or slows their page loading, or eats CPU time for no good reason. Discussing ad blocking as ethical or unethical is only part of the issue here… it’s also important to consider whether ad blocking is necessary, or if it’s just something that’s happening because people want to hurt web masters. The fact of the matter is that as a consumer, it is unsafe to surf the web without some sort of protection. It is the user’s machine, and it is their right to protect it as they see fit.
To the starving web masters out there, I say this. Welcome to capitalism. If you piss off your customer base, they will stop being your customers. If you can’t monetize a visit to your web site without being paid to push harmful garbage at the user, then your web site is going to fail, because ad blocking is here, and will remain here. Deal with the problems, find solutions that people won’t be as angry about. Get on the micropayment bandwagon. Make your site for paid subscribers only. Offer an ad free version of your site in exchange for donations. Check the ads your serving to make sure they’re not doing anything harmful under the covers, and that they’re up to the quality you want to be serving. Remember that anything that is served during a hit to your site reflects on your site, regardless of where it comes from, so stay away from the advertising network services and know what it is you’re putting up. If your business model is to annoy people for money, expect no sympathy when you fail, because the web will be better off without you.
March 2nd, 2006 at 6:33 am
Well said Hoqenisy and randomguy. Your arguments and reasons for the necessity of some sort of adblocking are valid.
It comes to a point, however, where solutions cross over from blocking “bad” ads to blocking too many, for the sake of helping the user. If the user has made the decision to do this from a knowledgable position, like you guys, it’s difficult to argue against that. As a webmaster, I may still decide that I don’t want you to be able to do that. (Pretend for the sake of this discussion that I really do have valuable content and that you REALLY DO want to see it.) Should I not have a say in that? Some commenters here have called using technology to subvert adblocking to be underhanded, but isn’t using adblocking that cannot be detected the same?
That’s not the major issue, however.
It’s when the less-technically-savvy masses start to receive adblocking solutions without a good uderstanding of what’s going on that feels wrong to me. Sure, you can do it under the banner (no pun intended) of protecting them from the evils of spyware, but I think it’s irresponsible for the developers of tools to offer broad-sweeping blocking rules that pick up even the webmasters who do make sure they’re doing nothing harmful.
Micropayments and subscription models have failed over and over even for the big guys. The world may be coming around to that concept, but it’s still a long way off. I really like the option of an ad-free site in exchange for a donation/payment model, and I think becoming more and more accepted, but adblocking software stymies this model as well.
Let me ask you this. If a webmaster offers an ad-free version of their site for a nominal fee, and you continue to use adblocking software to accomplish the same on their site for free, is that ethical?
It’s not only starving webmasters who are concerned with this. Some of us do just fine and CAN monetize a site without pushing harmful garbage. My business model is not to annoy people. I haven’t pissed off my customer base, someone else has. There’s something fundamentally wrong with a solution that punishes me for that.
March 3rd, 2006 at 3:09 am
> Well said Hoqenisy and randomguy. Your arguments and reasons for the
> necessity of some sort of adblocking are valid.
> It comes to a point, however, where solutions cross over from blocking “bad” ads to
> blocking too many, for the sake of helping the user. If the user has made the decision
> to do this from a knowledgable position, like you guys, it’s difficult to argue against
> that. As a webmaster, I may still decide that I don’t want you to be able to do that.
> (Pretend for the sake of this discussion that I really do have valuable content and that
> you REALLY DO want to see it.) Should I not have a say in that? Some commenters
> here have called using technology to subvert adblocking to be underhanded, but isn’t
> using adblocking that cannot be detected the same?
The thing is, as soon as you have a say in it, everyone does. The people who are serving good ads will say “I’m serving good ads! Don’t block me!” and the people who are serving bad ads will say “I’m serving good ads! Don’t block me!” It’s just one more thing they have to do to get through to the user.
> That’s not the major issue, however.
> It’s when the less-technically-savvy masses start to receive adblocking solutions
> without a good uderstanding of what’s going on that feels wrong to me. Sure, you can
> do it under the banner (no pun intended) of protecting them from the evils of spyware,
> but I think it’s irresponsible for the developers of tools to offer broad-sweeping
> blocking rules that pick up even the webmasters who do make sure they’re doing
> nothing harmful.
The problem here is that it’s infeasible to define a set of ad types or technologies that are harmful, and therefore blockable, that won’t be out of date the day after release. Developers aren’t being malicious in what they’re doing… as we’ve agreed, there is a need for this software, especially for the users that aren’t savvy enough to take care of themselves. By making broad sweeps, the developers have the best chance of a solution that holds off the most really harmful content, and that will last as long as possible. If it were possible to make a magic black box that would stop anything that the user would be harmed or offended by, but let everything through they wanted to see, or that was coming from a source they wanted to support, then most users would probably choose that. Unfortunately, such software isn’t currently possible. So, the developers are left with a choice: block everything they can, because then they know they are blocking the really harmful subset of that to the best of their abilities, or intentionally let some stuff through. If they leave intentional holes in the system, regardless of the intentions, it’s just a matter of time (and probably a short period at that) before they are exploited and the software becomes useless. If they cover everything they can, then some web masters are going to lose some money. I would argue that of two bad choices, they are making the better one, especially for the less tech savvy crowd. If a technically savvy person gets spyware or viruses, depending on severity it’s probably not a big deal. They will likely know how to take care of their machine. If a casual user gets something nasty because the site they found through a search engine served them up a bad ad (or caused a bad ad to be served to them, if they use a third party advertising service), it can cause more serious problems for a much longer period of time. In short, making the broad sweeps to guard the user as much as possible is the *more* ethical choice.
> Micropayments and subscription models have failed over and over even for the big
> guys. The world may be coming around to that concept, but it’s still a long way off. I
> really like the option of an ad-free site in exchange for a donation/payment model,
> and I think becoming more and more accepted, but adblocking software stymies this
> model as well.
Ad funded sites also fail. But the technologies involved aren’t the point, just the fact that there are alternatives. If a business model doesn’t work because a technology is abused (by anyone), or if it drives customers away (regardless of the reason) then it still doesn’t work. The web and underlying internet isn’t a static system. If advertisement on the web worked at some point as a way to make money for web masters, that is no guarantee that it will continue to work as the times change. If there is a fault here, it lies with the people who have abused the technology to the point where it hurts legitimate users, both web masters and web surfers.
I donate regularly to the sites I really like. Most times, though, this is based on content rather than the promise of relief from ads. Granted, this bar is high — the content needs to be worth it.
> Let me ask you this. If a webmaster offers an ad-free version of their site for a nominal
> fee, and you continue to use adblocking software to accomplish the same on their site
> for free, is that ethical?
In direct answer to your question, no, I do not consider that ethical, provided that the advertisements really were not doing anything wrong from the user’s perspective.
If the web consisted of a single site, with ads that were harmless, or at worse a minor annoyance for the user, and the software specifically stripped it of its ads so the user could view it without contributing any hits to the ads at all without paying, then that would be a much more arguable case for the unethical use of ad blocking technology. The thing is, though, it’s not like that. Ad blocking isn’t targetting specific sites to make web masters suffer, it’s addressing a real and serious general problem with the system at this point in time.
Is it ethical for a web master to ask their users to put up with the risks of not ad blocking purely for the sake of their web site? Unless the users are only ever visiting the single site, I say no. Is it ethical for a user to specifically target a web site with ad blocking software so that they can take advantage of the web master? Again, no. Is it ethical for a user to preemptively protect themselves from problems that can affect their user experience or system health? As you may have gathered, I say yes. If a user isn’t capable of setting up and maintaining an ad blocking system so that they are protected from the things that will harm them and still able to let through the things that will not, then is it ethical for them to use a broad strokes system that may block too much? I say absolutely, and further, I say it’s unethical to subject the overworked IT and helpdesk professionals of the world to advocate that such a user should not to run software to protect them.
> It’s not only starving webmasters who are concerned with this. Some of us do just
> fine and CAN monetize a site without pushing harmful garbage. My business model is
> not to annoy people. I haven’t pissed off my customer base, someone else has.
> There’s something fundamentally wrong with a solution that punishes me for that.
I absolutely agree that there is a fundamental problem here. But the ad blockering programs aren’t the problem. They are making users less pissed off with the internet as a whole. The benign webmasters certainly aren’t the problem, as without content, the internet would just be unused wires. It’s the people who did the damage in the first place who have created the fundamental problem, who are still out there, still abusing the technology, and by so doing have necessitated the creation of ad blocking software. I argue that they have acted unethically, but since the problem does exist, and it isn’t going to go away, it should be solved either technically or through a shift in models. Pretending one or the other group of victims is at fault and wishing the problem wasn’t here is not a solution, or at least not a good one.
March 3rd, 2006 at 5:28 am
RandomGuy, I think we agree a hell of a lot more than not. I’ve condemned the bad advertisers as much, if not more, than adblocking software. And I’m tolerant of the concept of adblocking software as long as it empowers the user to make their own choices and not grow out of hand.
My entire purpose here is to get people thinking about this fundamental issue so that, as if this one little website could have such impact, a change could happen not only from an adblocking perspective, but from the advertising perspective as well before something crazy happens to make reality more like the web you describe as being a single site and every ad can be easily blocked. It’s actually not that implausible. What if some misguided product marketing manager at Dell bundled Firefox with Adblock and Filterset.G, just like one pushed reckless adblocking technology into Norton Internet Security 2004. The whole thing feels like a cold-war arms race.
>>I donate regularly to the sites I really like. Most times, though,
>>this is based on content rather than the promise of relief from ads.
>>Granted, this bar is high — the content needs to be worth it.
Your point about donation as an alternative hit home yesterday and I built a quick donation system here. Not that I expect to make money and I don’t expect adblock.org to be above your bar, but it’s a proof of concept. Check it out.
Thanks for adding your perspective, I’ve enjoyed reading it.
March 4th, 2006 at 12:38 am
First off, I mainly agree with your position. I generally feel that the user should be in full control-including whether to display ads or not. I’ve always used adblock, but not with any filterset-if I see an annoying (for me, annoying means it moves, flashes, yells, or is right smack in the middle of content) ad, I just right-click and hit “Adblock image”. Easy enough done.
On the other hand, I usually find tasteful, relevant, and above all STATIC ads to be fine, and occasionally I’ve even purchased something via a Google ad as they tend to be relevant to the page. No trouble with those, they’re generally relevant if you’re looking to buy something (or even just price something), and they’re out of your way if you’re not.
I tend to agree with you about filtersets being included by default-however, there are also the issues there such as tracking cookies. I know what those are, and when I find one in cookies that entire subdomain goes into cookies blocked. I know to do that, but most users do not. I think it would be very useful if software like, well, whatever adware/malware/crapware scanners are popular on Windows these days were capable not only of removing tracking cookies but, if the user wished, adding those cookies to the “blocked” lists of any web browsers the user had installed (IE/Firefox/Opera at least, that’d capture better then 99% and generally those who are using anything else from those three are tech-savvy enough to do it on their own).
It is unfortunate that people resorted to tactics like adware/malware, popups/popunders, whack the monkey, and other intrusive tactics. I’d like to note that I never saw ANY demand for software to block ads before these tactics became commonplace (and I’ve been using the Net since a 14.4 was fast.) There was plenty of content around then, and people survived just fine with text ads and tasteful banners, or even just running a site because they -wished- to with no advertising at all. I don’t see the issue so much as bandwidth (for me personally anyway, I have 8 Mbps downstream, though of course those still on dialup may see it differently), but as a simple case of pollution. When I’m visiting web pages for information, I expect them to be serving me information, not screaming monkeys. If they want to do a banner and some adwords to pay the bandwidth bill, fine and great! But you don’t annoy your customers and expect them not to do something about it.
As to the micropayment/subscription model, that’s been proposed hundreds of times and tried even more. It’ll never work. Whatever’s on your site that you want $5 for, I’ve got 5000 more results on Google. I have donated to some sites I like, as well as to several open-source programs I use frequently. If you want my money for information, you’d better ask nicely-it’s easily replicated. If you’re going to demand it, I can find it somewhere else. Ask nicely, and consistently provide good information without annoying the hell out of me, and I will probably eventually slip you a few bucks.
It’s basic human nature to want to share what we know, love, and learn with other human beings. Someone will always do so for the love of it and not charge a nickel, and while they do, no one else is going to be too successful at charging for it. Wikipedia is but one example of this.
But anyway, this admittedly long-winded rationale brings us back to the question at hand. Is adblocking ethical? Of course it is! If I record a TV program, it’s not “unethical” for me to fast-forward through the commercials. If I’m watching live, it’s not unethical for me to get up and go to the bathroom or changing the channel when the ads come on. Why would it be any different in choosing what I watch on my computer screen? Is it ethical for anyone to include adblocking software with what most people think is a virus scanner (at least without posting clearly that the program blocks ads in addition to whatever else it does?) No, it’s not ethical to do anything to a person’s system without -CLEARLY- notifying them. Of course, this also applies to adware that notifies the user in legalese on page 371 of a long-winded EULA that it will track you and cause popups, or to sites which track the user via cookie or other means without clear notification. (The “Privacy policy” link in 3-point text at the bottom of the page, that leads to a 100-page legal disclaimer that Clarence Darrow would have trouble unraveling, is not clear notification.)
March 9th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Adblocking is a response to the unethical behavior of SOME advertisers, but at what cost? The adblocking response has the potential to punish ALL advertisers.
Adblocking that starts out with a clean slate and blocking rules are added to is by the user is one thing. That’s a user deciding what they don’t like. A broad filter set is quite another. You cannot tell me that Filterset.G doesn’t stop any ads that would pass for ethical advertising. I’d bet that the contributors to that filter set have a goal to obliterate as many ads as they can.
Backlash that affects 100% of a group based on the actions of a sub-set of that group is an accepted standard of social or professional behavior? Not where I live.
March 14th, 2006 at 9:15 am
“mildly retarded” — You’ve just exposed yourself for what you probably are. A cocky, immature, just out of college, IT guy.
Tirade or not, all respect I had for you was just lost with this tasteless remark which just overshadowed everything else you just said.
April 19th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
I can understand blocking the irritating flash ads or the huge blocky ads and have some sort of animation going on, but I remember reading that google text ads and other affiliate referral text ads were also being blocked. That’s way overboard. These stupid adblockers block all ads, not just the irritating ones.
If the adblockers were really trying to be responsible, they would deliberately allow text link ads to come through. The google Adsense ads do not harm anybody and they certainly do not take up bandwidth (just a few bytes–no big deal). The adblockers are just lazy about doing the right thing.
April 26th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Ads are Ads no good or bad Ads.
We have to put up with them on TV , but you can turn the volume off during the add break, They are on commercial radio stations, but thats OK i stick to good old Auntie Beeb, Magazines are at least 50% adds, but you can just turn the page
I have a way to block them from the internet and I will block them whenever and however i can.
it would be ok if they just put adds at the bottom of the page, they could be ignored then, but flash adds appear over the text in a page forcing you to click to close them, you have then looked at the add and taken its message on board.
I should not have to have them forced on me and will continue to block all adds.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
You totally forget any cultural perspective.
Any typical US magazine being sold in Europe is considered annoying if it features the typical US style of advertising, meaning that almost half of the content consists of ads.
What you also see is that ads are being placed in the parts of articles so that the articles are cut in half, or three parts or even more. That’s annoying, not because the ad in itself might be, but because of the fact that you are hindering the user from reading the article in a normal way.
And of course, I hark back from the old BBS days, there were no ads, you had slow speeds and you paid through the nose for your phone costs.
And nowadays with so many vulnerabilities in images, browsers and what not, any ad can be a potential attack vector.
With my own browser I can use the Internet how I want it, if that means I am filtering your ad, sorry, but I will because I can to make *my* experience how I want it.
If you need the financial gain, create a subscription-only site, but don’t get on your high horse and talk about ads and ethics. Because if you do there’s a whole can of worms waiting for you: you display those ads, so you endorse them and you consider the products offered ethical? There be dragons.
July 19th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
There’s a lot of talk about the ethics of adblocking as if it can only go one way. Only blocking can be unethical. What is the reality? One of the first things your mother teaches you is that it is wrong to lie. That’s a basic ethical principle available to just about anybody with a shred of compunction or common sense.
So what is advertising? Advertising is an industry which attempts to persuade the public to buy a product which, if fully informed, it would not. What is that if not an act of deception. The advertising industry is a vast and unnecessary attempt to constrain public behaviour. It has nothing to do with informing the public. The cost involved in producing a region-specific web database of products would be microscopic compared to the staggering sums spent advertising.
As for the publisher’s need for revenue, I don’t doubt it. But just because they survive by selling their readers to advertisers doesn’t make advertising right. If we are capable of questioning the ethics of adblocking, we are capable of questioning the ethics of advertising. And if we can do that, then we can surely find a way of rewarding those who provide genuine public benefit on the internet.
In the meantime the general public will continue to attempt to free itself from the pernicious influence of advertising by seeking what tiny corners remain where escape is possible. It is interesting that only now, when a small portion of the public has found a way of protecting one of those corners does ethics even become an issue.
August 15th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
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.
September 21st, 2006 at 8:17 am
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.
October 11th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
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.
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:16 am
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
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:42 am
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.
November 17th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
GOOGLE it up n00b
November 17th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
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”
November 17th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
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.
November 18th, 2006 at 11:25 am
“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.
December 8th, 2006 at 12:11 am
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.
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4 Firefox, just download adblock plus.
@
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/file/30901/adblock_plus-0.7.5.5-fx+tb+sm.xpi
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[…] Be Nice to The Evils of the Internets I’ve recently become interested in ways to detect ad filtering and prevent users from accessing resource intensive services based on that. I am a webmaster meself. And i don’t use adblock/adblockplus when browsing. I do use it for debugging though. I have a website that offers ‘free’ downloads. Well ‘free’ because the user doesn’t have to fork out any actual cash. But the bandwidth consumed is paid for by ads. For that reason i have most of the advertisement, including a popunder concentrated in the download section. I make a point of warning visitors that there will be ads displayed to them, what type, how many, etc. And also telling them why the ads are here and why they should allow them to load and the possible risks and to disable third party cookies just in case. There’s already a lot that has been said on whether adblocking is ethical or not. I’ve read through that post and comments and would like to add my 2 cents. Webmasters say: I offer a service. I don’t sell a product. The only way i can get compensated for it is by advertising. that is a view i have to agree to. It may be a cultural thing but i really can’t see how blocking the source of revenue of the webmasters can be considered to be ethical. Users say: 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. yes. You should be able to decide what uses your bandwidth and gets displayed on your computer. But. That content still comes from my server. So i should be able to decided what get sent to your computer from my server. Well ok. Some of the ads are from third parties. But it’s still included on a page generated on my server which is paid for by money generated by those same ads. Ads have become horribly annoying. They flash, move, jitter, pop up, pop under. I can’t focus on the actual content that i’m reading. while i agree that excessive advertising is extremely annoying. But getting distracted by shiny objects is a bit weak an argument. How distracting can an ad possibly be….? If you are completely hypnotised by moving objects i say you probably have a pathological condition… You see an ad displayed a few times, you may find it amusing or not, but after a while you should naturally get used to it and ignore it. People had already developed mental blocks against google ads long before anything like adblock was around. I really can’t see what’s so troublesome with banner ads. I don’t use adblock/plus or any ad filter and the current day internet does not distract me unduly. Except some ads are actually quite good. Beautiful even. I mean, you have to salute their creativity. the internet should be free! Go hug a tree, you damn hippie! The internet has changed. It is a business and a serious one. About 2 decades ago, if you worked with computers, a lot of people would tell you to get a real job. But nowadays, we are actually trained and formed to work in internet related businesses. This is a real job. I’d say above that the adblocking is a cultural thing. I think the people who use ad filters don’t think very far ahead. At least not beyond their personal benefit. The internet is not free. You pay for your bandwidth. And the internet advertising model allows you trade some of that bandwidth for ‘free’ or shall we say ‘very very low cost’ services. It is a fair exchange. Agreed there’s a lot of crap and abuse out there. But don’t you think it’s about time you woke up and smelled the shit? (It’s a pun, don’t quote this) there are dangerous places and dangerous things on the web. It’s one thing to browse intelligently and another to shoot at anything that moves (pre-emptive strike no jitsu!) on the presumption that it may be slightly dangerous. You can’t compare ads in webpages to ads on tv or in newspapers either. Well actually you can. When you walk away from you television when the ads are showing, that does not mean you’re removing them from the airwaves. They are still there. The tv stations still get their money. Same for magazines, you don’t cut out the ads from the pages. If you did, you’d miss out on a lot. (I use display advertising btw. Awesome concept. You don’t even have to click.. Much) I don’t know how much sense i’m making. But yeah… Adblocking is just not polite from my perspective. Posted by Ketwaroo D. Yaasir at 04:16 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) Trackbacks Trackback specific URI for this entry No Trackbacks Comments Display comments as (Linear | Threaded) No comments Add Comment […]
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