I've never used an ad blocker. I accept that today's web largely depends on advertising, so it feels like the right thing to do. I also think that using an ad blocker is like wanting to attend a concert, deciding the price is too high, and sneaking in anyway. It feels like stealing.
That said, I don't like ads any more than anyone else does. I rarely click on them, and I avoid sites that overdo them.
It makes me sad that the web is in a death spiral. The more people use ad blockers, the more intrusive ads need to be for the remainder of us who don't, which further encourages the self-interested to use ad blockers. The only ways I see to end the death spiral are to successfully reset the ad-vs-ad-blocker dynamic (which I suppose Google is trying to do with this move), or for another revenue model to take hold. I don't think either will happen. It's too bad, because I grew up with the web, and I don't want it to die.
I have never used an ad blocker and have resisted installing it many times. My thinking always was: I'd rather have a web with ads than a web in which I have to pay for content and sign up to 800 different websites with 800 different accounts.
A website that I've frequented a lot, the German news website spiegel.de, has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore. I am not saying that's the fault of ad blockers, but it certainly didn't help.
Sometimes I feel guilty about using an ad blocker on sites I like. A few times, I've felt guilty enough to turn it off for a site I use a lot and trust, only to find the page completely clogged with ads that block the UI and generally make an awful experience. At this point, I've learned my lesson.
Not to mention that malvertising is still an issue that affects even major sites. In my view, browsing the web without an ad blocker is like hooking up with strangers without using PrEP - it's just not a good idea.
Honestly, I won't use an ad-blocker if the ads weren't so creepily targeted and so annoyingly pervasive. Hell, I don't even mind looking and clicking on some ads if they are not intrusively shoved down my throat.
I think this article downplays the downsides of ad blockers too much. If ad blockers become the norm, much of the current web will no longer be viable. Facebook, YouTube, Google, Reddit, StackOverflow, and countless other sites are fundamentally based on advertising and can't survive without it.
The article tries to address this a little bit with the "Ad blockers do not block all advertising" section, but I don't think it fully acknowledges that if everyone installs uBlock Origin as the article suggests the web as we know it will collapse.
For a very long time, I did not want to use ad blockers. I have used ads in the past to monetize some of my own projects, and I really did not want to stab the creators of quality content.
However, last week I finally reversed my decision and started using ad blockers. Why? Frankly, many sites are just greedy. Banners were ugly enough (and I tolerated them) but many sites these days show ads that cover the content, and going as far as to hide the [x] button for a few seconds. And, I am not even talking about privacy and security issues.
Businesses have to come up with better monetization strategies. Shoving ads on my face and making me accidentally click them is a net loss for everyone.
If you're a user reading this kind of article or paper, you should not feel guilty for using an ad-blocker. You are simply protecting yourself. The people who should stand up and take notice are website admins and ad providers.
The web's ad industry is nothing short of amazing. A small number of users started using ad blocking software when ads became obnoxious and intrusive, flashing, spinning, spawning popups and obscuring the content they're supposed to accompany. Did the ad industry take a hint? No, they moved, en masse, to ads that were more obnoxious and intrusive. Then they started exploiting browsers to discover as much personal information as possible about users, which motivated even more people to install ad blockers. Then ads became one of the most significant vectors of malware, so people started adopting script and ad-blockers as standard safe-computing practice.
It's reached the point where I would not allow either my parents or my children to run a browser without an ad-blocker installed. That's how bad it's gotten.
Ad providers have had years to establish ways of delivering safe, privacy-respecting, non-intrusive, content-specific advertising. They haven't, and the rising use of ad blocking is the natural consequence. The demand from people running websites should be there. Maybe space devoted to an ethical ad provider would make less money in the short-term, but anyone can see that ignoring the rise of ad-blocking is going to hurt their bottom line down the road.
Ads just work in print media. They don't jump out of the corner of the page and cover up articles while flashing and making loud noises. They don't invade your privacy. They don't damage your property. Online ads need to advance to this state. The onus is on ad providers and those employing them to accomplish this, not on users to uninstall their ad blockers.
There are people that don't use ad blockers these days? I'm honestly not aware of many besides maybe some of my elderly family members. Not that people necessarily declare to me upon first meeting their stance on ad blockers, but it's a common enough topic at work, with some of my friends, and with some of my friends/family when they ask my help figuring out if there's a reason their computer is slow. Many of the people that ask for my help with their computers are already using ad blockers too.
Granted I imagine there's a sizeable percentage of people that watch YouTube from a smart TV and don't have, say, PiHole configured as the default DNS server on their router.
And it's not that I'm against web services making money off of my page views, it's just that some of the ads out there are just downright malicious, and I don't trust advertisement services to properly vet them.
Personally, I don’t mind an ad or two. It’s not ads, per se, that have me using an ad blocker... it’s the “bad UI impact of tons of ads and pop-ups” that keep me in ad block mode. When a site wants me to turn off the ad blocker and it doesn’t look insane, I’m happy to comply. Same with DDG.
I know it will never happen. At least not anytime in the near future.
There is usually a group of people advocating that using an adblocker is like stealing or killing businesses. My counter argument is that I'm fine with that. Don't offer something for free when I have complete control over how it is displayed on my end if you can't stay in business if I block some part of it. Everyone on the planet should use ad blockers for their own protection and to actively change the internet to a non-ad business model.
I will never stop using ad blockers and I don't feel bad about it in the slightest.
I've started to think about it differently. I no longer use any ad blockers.
I actually want to experience the web (and its decline) the way it is, to take it all in, feel the pain and strengthen my patience in the process.
Also, when I visit a website that is truly obnoxious with its ads, I simply leave immediately and never go there. You build your own filter of bad actors, behaviors, and concrete sites. You don't need to block everyone, you simply walk away from abusers. You want to take notice of improper behavior before consciously and deliberately boycotting it.
I finally installed an ad blocker a couple of years back, after two decades of browsing without. It had become too much for me to cope with. The popups that took advantage of me clicking to focus on their page to get past my popup blocker, the ads with sound that didn't start muted, the overlay ads that blocked out the whole page until acknowledged, etc. This doesn't even begin to address the privacy concerns. I spent too much time being angry at nameless faceless advertisers and the asshole coders who serve them.
I never liked advertising, but I usually liked the sites I was visiting and wanted to support them, so I didn't kill the ads. Even now, I let a small number of sites serve me ads, if they have shown themselves to be responsible and respectful of my attention. reddit is one of the very few, for example, because they almost never serve a really obnoxious ad.
And, of course, I have never heeded the alligator tears of the online marketing industry (or any other marketing industry...physical junk mail producers can rot in hell). I respect the desire of websites to support their business. But, I'm not obligated to accept the method by which they want to do it, if it includes behavior that I consider unethical or just annoying.
I agree with blocking ads because so many of them have just got so damn intrusive lately, to the point where if your mouse pointer ends up over the wrong part of the screen it takes over the whole screen, and the other ones that really annoy me are the ones that have sound and automatically play. To that end i believe blocking ads can be the solution until sites stop using such intrusive ads. The intrusive ads are also more likely to make me despise the product being advertised instead of wanting to buy it so there is no advantage a lot of the time having the ads enabled
I think running an ad blocker is freeloading, the same as using paywall-bypassing software. There are worse things people regularly do, but I do think it's minorly wrong and I don't run an ad blocker.
I would be fine with ad blockers that only blocked ads, as long as publishers could chose to refuse service to users running ad blockers or ask them to turn their ad blocker off. But uBlock Origin etc don't just block ads, they also pretend to the site that the ads aren't blocked.
I do not install ad-blockers. Tried out Ad-Block Plus, but disabled it after a week. Your claim about "most people" installing ad-blockers as soon as they can is completely unsubstantiated.
I don't do that because if a website or web service doesn't respect me as a customer, pushing annoying ads down my throat, I would rather stop reading/using it, which is a form of voting with your wallet. Instead I prefer to reward loyalty to websites that are tasteful and put users interests first. As an example, such a website would be Reddit.
Installing ad-blockers has the reverse effect of what most users want. Ads will become more and more intrusive and difficult to block. And by visiting such a website, you're still giving that website eyeballs, you're still passing links around to your friends, you're still rewarding them for their behavior. It's like hiding the cookie jar from a fat kid, then congratulating him for being fat.
Installing ad-blockers is also immoral, just as software piracy is. I've seen arguments of people that don't think so, but it's hard to justify the piracy of Photoshop when there are free or cheaper alternatives available, it's hard to justify the piracy of MS Office when LibreOffice is available and it's hard to justify using Google Search with ad-blockers when there are alternatives like DDG.
If you don't like the ads served, just don't freaking use the service/website in question. It's amazing how self-entitled some people are.
I think ad-blockers are bad for the web. I have nothing against people running them, but I don't choose to. It incentivizes an arms-race between clients and servers to control the content that gets displayed. The end game of this race is bad for everyone. That's my reason.
I do not use ad blockers because I want to see how the owners of a website I'm interacting with really treat their users. I do not want to help some crappy web site to look better and more trustable to me than it really is. Don't like ads on a website — just go elsewhere.
I theory, I don't mind ads. For years I avoided ad-blockers. Then...
Ads make pages load slower. Ads on mobile browsers make the text jump around while I'm trying to read it. Ads put giant pop-ups over the text that I'm trying to read. Ads start playing loud music, or flash.
The problem isn't ads, it's a lack of bounds about what ads can and can not do.
The web ran fine for years with ad-blockers as a niche; but ad-blockers only got popular when the ads themselves overstepped their bounds and became too intrusive.
I'd be much happier if ads were reasonable and I didn't feel like I needed an ad-blocker just to view the %$#%@ website.
That said, I don't like ads any more than anyone else does. I rarely click on them, and I avoid sites that overdo them.
It makes me sad that the web is in a death spiral. The more people use ad blockers, the more intrusive ads need to be for the remainder of us who don't, which further encourages the self-interested to use ad blockers. The only ways I see to end the death spiral are to successfully reset the ad-vs-ad-blocker dynamic (which I suppose Google is trying to do with this move), or for another revenue model to take hold. I don't think either will happen. It's too bad, because I grew up with the web, and I don't want it to die.
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