

Piracy and ad-blockers are both theft - chrislo
http://james.cridland.net/blog/piracy-and-ad-blockers-are-both-theft

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DanBC
I have some sympathy for the point of view that people visiting web-pages
should not run ad-blockers. I don't run one myself. Unfortunately my
willingness to see ads is being exploited by two things.

i) Shitty quality link-bait articles.

ii) people willing to serve some just plain awful ads. (Things with noise;
things with Flash; things that blink and shake and in horrible colours; things
that violate basic privacy and are borderline illegal in EU; etc etc.)

Please: Offer me sensible ads, or offer me a payment option.

I'm amazed at the number of newspaper sites that still don't offer an online
only subscription mode. I have no interest in having a dead tree newspaper
delivered to me, but I'm more than happy to pay for online access to good
quality articles.

I'd happily pay to read articles suggested by Longform. Perhaps they should
have a tipjar for each article with a suggested donation price; with a
separate tipjar for their site running costs?

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mooism2
I would have more sympathy towards the "blocking ads is theft" view if ad-
supported websites and applications didn't routinely claim they were free.

Either it's free (and we have no obligation to load ads, not that they should
be involved anyway) or it costs some of our privacy and/or attention (so we
should at least stick the ads on our screens, even if we don't consciously pay
attention to them). But claiming that something's free and then whinging that
we cut the ads out isn't on.

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orillian
Offer me an option that removes the ads, even if it costs me a little bit, we
both win. Otherwise the site owner looses, because if the ads are to much in
my face I either block them or never come back. I don't have cable TV for the
same reason. I'm tired of ads.

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tobiasu
Ridiculous.

