

Stop using AdBlock - HaloZero
http://alandofrohan.blogspot.com/2011/11/stop-using-adblock.html

======
evgen
Fun moments in driving a demo for the engineering team at my last company,
which was in the advertising space, was spending several minutes trying to
debug a problem with the demo before the CTO informed me that my toolbar
indicated that AdBlock was still turned on and Ghostery was probably eating my
company's tracking cookies so the demo was unlikely to work...

Did I stop using those tools? Not a chance. Advertising is for suckers. If
your site or service uses it then I wish you success, but I will not feel one
iota of remorse for taking every opportunity to reduce the clutter and
distraction of advertising from my life. If you want _my_ money have the balls
to ask me for it rather than trying to sell me as your secondary product.

~~~
kloncks
I get your point. But it's faulty.

My issue with this view is that the viewer makes himself seem like this
victim. Let's put ourselves in this scenario again. You, the viewer, are on my
website. You're using my server bandwidth while using my website functions,
which probably had a lot of investment go into them whether they were services
or content. Multiply you by a 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 and now we have a
problem.

This you take for granted. This you don't pay for.

It's _my_ website. I choose how to monetize it. If you like that, great;
otherwise, stop using _my_ website. Until we generate some automatic way of
blocking you from ever using my website while you're on AdBlock, then what
you're doing is stealing. No one forces you to use my website.

A lot of examples in the real world apply here. There are adverts on highways,
buses, buildings. Removing that clutter-creating huge banner ad from the
middle of the mall; how's that different from removing a leader-board from a
blog?

How can removing ads completely and automatically - from websites that earn
their entire existence from adverts - while still accessing the website's
content and using their server bandwidth anything less than a cowardly immoral
act of theft? And to hide behind that as some sort of hero for having the
mental capability of installing AdBlock is just downright delusional.

Blocking advertisements from people that live off of them while still using
their resources is theft. Plain and simple.

~~~
feralchimp
You deserve to monetize your website if you convince me to pay to access it.
Else, not.

If you leave 50,000 hot dogs on your porch every day, marked "Free hotdogs!
Come early, come often, and tell your friends!" and each has some nasty sauce
on it I dislike, I'm going to take a hotdog and make an effort to remove the
sauce. If I carry a sauce-removal machine, so much the better for me.

You're claiming a right to follow me down the block screaming "STOP THIEF! I
ONLY GET PAID IF YOU EAT THE SAUCE!"

See the problem? If I'm not a party to any of the agreements under which you
get paid, you don't get to bitch to me if my behavior fails to generate cash
for you.

~~~
kloncks
Simply by you stepping onto my ground, you're now under my house rules. With a
website, it's called a Terms of Service.

~~~
dho
Then enforce those rules and block people using AdBlock. Problem solved.

------
jcr
Time, effort, and concentration are limited resources. You only get so much of
each of them in your lifetime. If you wish to spend your limited resources
experiencing advertising, it's your choice. If you'd prefer to spend your
limited resources elsewise, again, it's your choice.

If Google and Facebook curled up and died tomorrow due to no one being willing
to spend their lives experiencing advertising, something would take their
place. Whether said "something" turns out to be better or worse is subject to
debate. There are plenty of possible business models, yet relying on revenues
from advertising has a proven track record of profitability due to most people
not being savvy enough to make advertising ineffective.

Personally, I've got better things to do with my life.

~~~
mh_
The OP reminds me of O'Reillys 2003 piece (buy where you shop)
<http://tim.oreilly.com/articles/buy_where_shop.html>

In his piece Tim OReilly warned against people who browsed at bookstores, but
only shopped online.

I suspect the same is true here.. if you use $service regularly, and $service
exists through advertising, then maybe whitelisting their ads is a reasonable
trade-off to make..

------
subtenante
Here is your argument : "I used AdBlock and was happy with it. Then I worked
for someone who lived from advertising, so I'm not happy with it anymore."

I call that being a slave of the one who feeds you. From a Marxist point of
view, you're only becoming servant of the interests of your exploiter, and now
are trying to share this point of view with the world.

Without even thinking one instant that maybe living off advertising has no
moral justification. Being exposed to advertising, as you say it yourself
(when acknowledging that you don't have to click on the ads), is being
unconsciously manipulated by them, and that's exactly what they are trying to
do.

Advertising is not work, it is not producing anything useful for the society.
It is only trying to either create needs or direct customer's attention to a
particular vendor without any objective comparison between products, often
creating value out of thin air just by gregarious feeling (so called "brands"
making people happy to buy something not for what it brings to them but
because they'll be happy to show their mates how cool they are to possess
something with a particular logo on it).

So well, I recently installed AdBlock because I was tired of having my
speakers start to shout silly songs when browsing the web at night, surprising
me and making my heart rate jump sky high. Otherwise I've trained to filter
visually the ads and completely ignore them. I don't feel any guilt of having
less noise in the pages I visit.

For the ones who feel like they deserve some money for the time they put into
their blog, just put a donation button somewhere, be transparent with how much
money you make from it, and I won't mind a popup asking to click on it.

------
Cyranix
I don't appreciate the assumption that my time and attention are commodities
that others inherently deserve to profit from. When I want to find a product
that fits a particular need, I'll go looking for it intentionally; when I have
other purposes for being online, I want that to be respected. Websites aren't
free to run, but depending on your actual costs you have other options that
respect your readers, from making your content a paid service (for larger
enterprises) to asking for donations (for small blogs).

AdBlock disrupted the advertisement-based revenue system. Are you going to
defend the old ways or embrace new ideas?

------
noonespecial
I think maybe I'll turn my adblock off when advertisers quit blasting me with
loud auto-playing video/audio ads that start automatically.

It really blows to open a dozen tabs and then suddenly have one start playing
some goofy "nerd saves the day with MAGIC TECHNOLOGY" ad that I can't find and
shut off. On a loop.

Advertising _could_ have been unobtrusive like the author claims but
advertisers chose otherwise trying to one-up each other. This is why you can't
have nice things.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
I haven't seen such ads in 5 years or more. I use NoScript to prevent most
Flash from running without my permission, and that's the primary way that such
ads blast things without your permission, but the only annoying music/auto-
play video I've encountered typically is just a poorly designed web site, not
an ad on a site. And 99% of the time, it's a TED talk video that's auto-
playing when I restore Firefox...sigh...

I agree with the article. If you don't like a site, don't go there. Don't
steal their bandwidth and try to justify it.

~~~
noonespecial
_I agree with the article. If you don't like a site, don't go there. Don't
steal their bandwidth and try to justify it._

It sure would be nice to be able do decide that in advance.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Umm....and it's a terrible, terrible tragedy to accidentally see an awful web
page once.

With something that blocks scripting, you don't need to worry about a site
infecting your browser/computer. If the site is covered with ads, then close
the window, and it's gone. Then downvote it on HN or Reddit or where ever you
found it.

------
feralchimp
"If you are a software engineer, stop fucking using AdBlock now. We ALL have
at least one friend who works at Google, or Yelp, or Facebook, or somebody.
Even if the company doesn't rely on advertising as a revenue source, I'm sure
they use it as a source of getting new customers."

Commence fucking that static this instant, and do not stop until I put "pad
Google's EBITDA" on my todo list somewhere above "have a less bullshit-laden
experience on the Internet."

I mean honestly...making it convenient for marketers to monetize my web
browsing is about the last thing on Earth for which I feel a shred of personal
responsibility.

------
danmaz74
I simply deactivated flash by default, and only activate it when I want (on
both Chrome and Firefox). This way I still see ads, but not those which eat my
cpu, hog all my memory, and distract me to death. I think this is a good
compromise.

~~~
HaloZero
This is pretty much what I do, flash ads get blocked but I would imagine many
ad sites will start having fallbacks for mobile browsers. No data on that
though.

------
hendzen
TiVo is a set-top box that blocks advertisements. I know a lot of people who
use it, and even I used to use it. I thought it was a necessary part of the
watching experience.

There are two main reasons why I stopped using it: I started to use a HD TV.
This was quite a while back and TiVo didn't work on HD then. So I decided to
go without it.

The second reason was when I worked at NBC and an employee noticed that TiVo
started blocking NBC ads. It felt hypocritical that I blocked ads but worked
at a company that relied on advertising.

At first I thought I could just whitelist shows, but then what about one time
programs that have good segments? Why deny them advertising revenue. Think
about how many shows rely on advertising that you watch. Lost, Fringe,
Futurama, News, Seinfeld, Adult Swim (Questionable Content I've always noted
specifically).

So I stopped using TiVo and honestly the experience hasn't been that bad.
There are a few shows that show annoying ads like 10 minute Shake-Weight
commercials. But for the most part, ads aren't that bad. The age of the really
really obnoxious ones have been stopped or perhaps I watch different channels
than I used to? Either way, I haven't had too much trouble or annoyance.

------
linuxhansl
I'll stop using AdBlock and FlashBlock as soon as advertisers stop using
animated GIFs or even flash with _sound_. Thank you very much.

------
mcclung
There is advertising on the Internet? I almost forgot.

Advertising got a really bad reputation with a lot of people, and they are
unlikely to turn off their armor for anyone. If you are having a problem with
the relatively small community who uses ad blocking software, you are paying
the price for years of annoying animated gifs, flash, and ridiculous punch-
the-monkey win ipod scams.

I whitelist a few sites I use regularly and that I'd like to "support", after
an article on arstechnica awhile ago. But it's a short list.

------
gst
Ads are one issue. Sending information about (almost) every website you visit
to Google is another issue. That's my main reason for blocking pests such as
AdWords, +1 buttons, and Facebook buttons.

------
tokenadult
Speak for yourself. I use other computers in my household that don't have
AdBlock installed, and every time I do, I am reminded why I use AdBlock on my
main work computer (this one).

------
ThePinion
I refreshed his page (with Adblock on) a few extra times. Just out of spite I
think.. I'm an asshole sometimes.

But in my defense: every website I've made and still have up has never had a
single advertisement on it. I don't like them, so I don't push them on people.
However, I do whitelist sites I use daily for free such as Reddit and Imgur.

------
plinio_silva
This will probably offend some startup people here (who probably rely on
advertisement to run their otherwise unprofitable websites), but advertisement
is evil. How can you believe in the power of capitalism and the invisible hand
and still think it's ok that people are all the time being led into buying
stuff they do not need because marketers study specifically how to
psychologically manipulate people into associating good emotions with material
crap?

I'm not saying there aren't other factors involved, but do you really think
the most popular brands are so due to merit? Don't you think the world would
be different if not so many people would just stop consuming products from the
very corporations they are protesting against?

This could be a very long rant, I just hope you can see where I'm going with
this, that the really unethical thing to do is to allow advertisement to
continue to exist.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
It doesn't offend me, but the concept that all advertising is evil is very,
very misguided. Just because big brands often use evil techniques to advertise
doesn't mean that it's all bad.

If I'm selling something used on Craigslist, that's advertising. If I'm
looking for a product to fill a need, and I don't know what to buy, the paid
links on Google have more than once led me to the perfect product. Every
single thing on Amazon's site (fill in ANY e-commerce site online here -- even
most of Craigslist, with things like apartments for rent), right down to the
product page, is, fundamentally, advertising.

You'd pretty much have to restrict the web to a highly edited version of
Wikipedia if you were going to outlaw advertising. And if you succeeded in
banning all advertising you'd just prevent new entries into any market, or the
creations of new markets, because everyone would tend to buy the products at
the stores they knew about already.

What's evil is not educating people in logical thinking, and in not
inoculating them at a young age against the kinds of psychological tricks
you're talking about.

~~~
plinio_silva
I'm sorry, english is not my first language, so I maybe that's why I thought
the word advertising didn't include craigslist postings. In portuguese we have
a very specific word to the advertising I'm referring to, "propaganda" (which
also has the same meaning as in english).

Craigslist/Ebay are exactly the kind of things we need more, especially ebay,
where you can see different offerings side by side and compare them on
objective grounds, then decide which one better fits your needs. And that's
the key, if I'm on ebay it's because I'm looking for something, people are not
trying to convince me to buy groupons when I'm actually looking to read a fine
article from HN.

If "I" succeeded in banning the advertisement I'm talking about (basically
impossible without censorship, and that's the last thing I'd want), more sites
would spring up to help people who are looking for something. You wouldn't
always buy from the same brand/store because you would have these tools to
help you make sure (with the least amount of effort possible) you are making
the best buy you can.

Furthermore, I think it's the existence of advertisement that is reducing the
incentives to create alternate business models (for content websites, for
example), like micro-payments (think very small subscription fee for a site
like salon.com), and basically tips, which could be considered donations but
would be too small to be worth it with the current payment processors.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
I read an article recently that pointed out that an episode of a TV show is
effectively an advertisement for the next TV show in the series. Propaganda
certainly has the connotations that you're looking for, but in English it's
typically used to refer to a certain class of political ads. I get what you're
saying, though, and I think the proper response is education.

Craigslist is great, and _I_ might consider a subscription to Salon.com if it
were inexpensive enough, but I think you're overestimating humanity's
willingness to part with cash. All you have to do is look at just about ANY
paid app on an iPhone or (especially) Android, and you'll find people
complaining that it should be free.

Just a few years ago, buying a small game for your computer would cost from
$7-$20. Now people complain if a game costs $1, even if the game contains
dozens of hours of entertainment value. It's not like it costs less to make a
polished game now than it did a few years ago.

And if a game is fun enough and has enough replay value, I can actually make
more than the $0.70 I make from a $1 sale by showing the users ads
(considering I get 200x as many downloads of a free version). Other models do
exist -- in-app payments for buying "coins" to play a game more, for example
-- but some of those end up feeling more evil than the advertising you're
decrying.

What you'd need to fight is the sense of entitlement that people have around
web content, which is what game developers have to fight on Android. I mean,
just look at the comments on this very article! We're talking HN readers who
feel entitled to get everything for free. People who have no connection with
web site creation or running a business will typically have even less of a
personal connection to the companies that they're hurting when disabling ads.

Micropayments for news sites could happen if you got the right sites to buy
in, but it's been tried again and again, so I suspect that it's the lack of
customers rather than the lack of site support that's the problem. If you got
the New York Times, Salon.com, and a half dozen other high-profile sites to
join a micropayment network, so I could sign up ONCE and go to a lot of
different news sites ad free, I'd like that as a customer. But I suspect that
you'd see the same ratio of 200x as many people sticking with the "free" ad-
supported sites.

But then again, it would be a hard sell for the New York Times, at least: They
want $35/month for a full digital subscription. That's off by at least a
factor of ten from what I'd be willing to pay, possibly more. I think I'd be
willing to pay $8/month to a micropayment network that included unlimited
access to at least a dozen or so sites ad-free, but the NYT is demanding a
much higher payment for unlimited access, so it's hard to believe they'd take
a much lower amount.

Finally, I wouldn't want the micropayments service to charge me every time I
looked at a site. I don't want to think about using the web; I want to browse
freely, without worrying that I'm spending money every time I click a link. So
those micropayments would need to come out of a monthly flat rate, to be
divvied up among the various sites I'd actually visited.

------
jfruh
The amount of entitlement on both sides of this debate is always pretty
amazing/amusing to me.

1) Publishers (and I am a publisher with an ad-supported site): Nobody owes
you an audience or a payday. If advertising is so annoying that people are
going out of their way to block it, then you're in trouble.

2) Readers: Nobody owes you professional-grade writing/video/whatever. If it's
impossible to make a living doing this stuff -- and in the first decade or two
of the web, the way to make a living doing this stuff has been advertising --
then most people will stop doing it and your life will be worse for it.

I don't know what the solution is, but pretending that the other side of what
ought to be a mutually beneficial relationship is your prisoner and that you
have the right to demand they do things to meet your needs and your needs only
won't get you far.

------
VengefulCynic
A couple of years ago, I remember Ars Technica ran an experiment for a day or
so when they blocked end users who run Ad Blocker.
([http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-
blocking...](http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-
devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars))

I recall it generated a lot of negative feedback, but at the same time, I'm
surprised it hasn't been copied more widely: If you're the kind of person
who's willing to use Ad Block on a site that's providing content financed
solely by advertising, I would imagine you're also the kind of "customer" that
at least some of those sites would prefer not to have.

~~~
BiosElement
No, it generated a lot of people writing Ars Technica off. You notice they
stopped? They didn't like their analytics taking the plunge.

------
danbmil99
> Group think and excusing things because you don't think your contribution
> matters is not an argument.

Sure it is -- it's a damn good argument. it's just very selfish, and breaks
the spirit of Kant's Categorical Imperative.

~~~
HaloZero
you have a point, I'll update the post.

------
smokey_the_bear
I hadn't installed AdBlock on my most recent laptop until I was using free
wifi at a hotel that loaded an ad underneath my mouse cursor every time a
webpage loaded. So if you clicked on anything within the first 10 seconds or
so of loading a page, you actually clicked on the ad. It's always something
egregious that pushes me over the edge, and I never uninstall it.

------
r00fus
How about someone creates a new AdBlock EasyList-based filterset that doesn't
blacklist sites that don't have obscene ads while blocking the major
offenders?

Or does AdBlock allow for (allow,deny) type rules like httpd.conf where you
can specify a whitelist? If so, a whitelist for certain sites may be the best
approach.

------
forkrulassail
I control my own web experience, and until I don't, well...

I can't control highway advertising but boy would I love an ad free city.

I search for what I want, let the mindless sheep get 'served'

------
greenyoda
One really good reason for blocking ads is that there have been many cases
where ad networks have been hacked to serve up drive-by malware.

------
democracy
Thanks for the reminder, I forgot to install it on a new machine...

------
salmanapk
Yeah stop using it, selfish people.

