

Ads are disgusting. - redxblood

I´ve used AdBlock for years. 
One of the first things i learned when i was introduced to the internet was about ad-blockers.
Nowadays i use a number of them, including disconnect, adblock and a number of other extensions that make my browsing faster and my life easier.<p>But what about people who don´t care &#x2F; don´t know about these little helpers who destroy all those intrusive little things? 
A while ago i went to my grandpa´s home, and at a certain moment i asked to use his computer to check my mail. I ended up going to several webpages because it was late at night and i was bored, and what i saw was devastating.
Ads were cluttering my screen and restricting me from closing them. New windows were minimizing themselves and playing sound, and my favourite websites were telling me i was the 1.000.000th visitor and asking me to claim my prize.
I would say just the fact that i had to see a youtube video stop to load an ad in the middle of it was enough to make me cringe.<p>Yes, i&#x27;m probably exagerating, but my grandpa is an avid internet user, and he is browsing in horrible conditions everyday, losing an insane amount of time closing popups and preventing his wife from seeing the porn ads.<p>The visual pollution that we have today is alarming.
It seems that the non-tech savvy portion of the population is suffering a great deal with websites trying to catch users with no ad-blockers, and it&#x27;s not only repelling this population from the wonders of the internet, but it&#x27;s also hindering what it really should be: A means to provide either a service or information to a user.<p>Extra info: In google, two thirds of my screen was occupied by an ad or an ad-sponsored search. It&#x27;s disgusting.<p>Disclaimer: My main language isn&#x27;t english, so i apologize in advance for bad grammar. 
Also, i know many won&#x27;t agree with my level of discomfort with ads, that&#x27;s okay. I&#x27;m just giving my opinion.
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MCarusi
As a content creator myself it's disappointing when I see Adblock rates as
high as they are, but I absolutely get it. If I'm upset at anyone in the
Adblock debate it's the advertisers; the people who introduced intrusive pop-
ups, auto playing videos, and those obnoxious banners with the smileys that
scream "OH MY GOD, NO WAY!"

Then there are the issues of ads causing videos to freeze, browsers to crash,
and containing malware. Or what if the ads are offensive to you or you have
young kids in the house? For me it's impossible to blame users who just want
to view their content in the most optimal way, which is why I see Adblock as a
barometer for how satisfied users are with the way websites are delivering
both paid and organic content.

~~~
redxblood
100% agree. Ads are being taken too far. But in moderation, i don't think they
are a bad thing if they help the developer.

~~~
threatofrain
I think that if I wanted to help out a developer, I'd rather cut out as much
middleman and pay directly or through kickstarter.

If there were a middleman, I would especially rather it have the character of
an entity like kickstarter, as opposed to an entity that tries to get a piece
of your attention so they can sell it to a group of bidders.

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chrisBob
I love Ads. With out them I would have to pay for a lot of the services that I
enjoy for free (like google). Some sites are worse than others, and I chose to
avoid them rather than stealing their service as you are.

~~~
redxblood
I'm not stealing. I ask for something with my browser, and these servers are
giving me more than i ask. I don't think that's okay. The people behind ads
know many will be blocked. Wikipedia survives on donations and doesn't stuff
your mouth with ads.

~~~
chrisBob
Legally you _may_ be correct that it is not stealing, but at best you are
altering a copyrighted work with out permission. Here there are a lot of web
based businesses with money on both sides of the advertising game, so I will
actually be surprised if you find much sympathy.

~~~
mcintyre1994
I agree with you that ads are good for the internet, but I'd very rapidly put
myself against the idea of any legal issue with modifying a website on the
client. There should be no question that I can do what I like with the HTML
served while it remains on my machine - whether that's blocking a popup,
removing an annoying advert or terribly placed menu from the DOM or anything
else.

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chrisBob
An additional option is to avoid sites that use practices, or a business model
you don't like. For example: I like the forecast from weather.com, but they
are one of the worst sites I have seen, and heaven help you if you have your
speakers turned on when you visit them.

Now I use weather.gov and I am pretty happy with the result.

~~~
codegeek
You sir are a life saver. I hate weather.com with such disgust but was too
stupid to find alternatives. Weather.gov it is from now on.

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lumpysnake
The problem is not with the ads themselves. What you described here screams
ADWARE at me. Somehow, your grandpa got an adware installed on his machine
(maybe by clicking on every ad that says "boost your computer speed by 10x!").
That's what is causing him such a painful browsing experience.

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cylinder
I'm assuming you'd be fine with paying for every Google search you make
instead?

~~~
dmm
If all ads were like Google's I seriously doubt AdBlock would have been
created or become as popular as it is.

~~~
tluyben2
Was coming here to say that ; I don't mind Adsense at all. Popover-unders-
interstitials and that kind of mess is... But I don't mind paying as long as
it's easy. I pay often if there is a donate button or a fee for removing ads
if the product is actually worth paying for and if it's easy and convenient.

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ninju
Yes...ads are annoying but they are not normally as annoying as the
espericence you had at your grandpa house.

I think he may have a virus/malware installed that is feeding extra ads into
the browsing session..particulary the aggressive pop-up windows are indicative
of client-side malware

You should you do virus check/removal with a reputable program.

~~~
redxblood
Thanks, he had around 3 viruses and a good dozen trojans. I formatted his
machine after that.

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fuj
Are you willing to pay for every website you visit? Oh yeah, you don't think
you should pay for anything. Somehow money goes on trees for the websites
owners, how dare they try to monetize their investments!

~~~
redxblood
Again, why should i pay for every website i visit? Are all of them paid? Why
do i have to accept erotic intrusive popups if my kids play around on the
internet all day long? Do i have to let my experience and time be wasted and
clogged by malware and auto playing videos?

~~~
krapp
Every website costs someone money. Someone's paying for the server. Someone's
paying for the bandwidth and hosting. Every time you access a site you're
using up someone's finite budget. Obviously, this is a dramatic simplification
because some pockets are deeper than others, but I believe it's generally true
- whether or not all of them are 'paid', all of them still have to be paid
for.

So then the question is not whether ads are harmful or intrusive or downright
malicious sometimes (they can be), but what better model is there to pay for
the resources than advertising or direct fees?

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J_Darnley
Yes. Yes they are. You won't find a lot of support for that opinion on this
website for websites which want to slurp up all your data just to sell it onto
someone else.

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TheLoneWolfling
My thoughts on ads:

I don't mind ads, as long as the following conditions are met:

* They don't present a security risk. * They don't impede the usability of the website (or, in the case of some ads, Firefox in general! Some Flash ads use absurd amounts of CPU) . * They don't leak information to third parties who may resell said information.

However, pretty much all ads in practice fall into one or more of these
categories.

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gregcohn
Is there anything more disgusting than ads that are disguised as mid-article
section headers?

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bediger4000
I agree. Advertising is a plague upon us, whether it finances free stuff or
not.

~~~
ghacks
And you would certainly be willing to pay for each free service that does not
use ads for financing in return, right?

~~~
redxblood
You are asuming everything on the internet should charge in one way or
another.

~~~
mcintyre1994
How do you propose companies like Google purchase data centers to index the
content of the internet so you can search it? Or offer everyone free storage
and anti-spam processing for their emails? Or would your vision of the
internet not include services like that?

~~~
redxblood
You're missing my point. I'm not saying we should NOT have ads. I'm saying the
level of quantity and aggresivity they have is intimidating. Google, one of
the most powerful websites in the world, and only one third of it's page when
presented are actual results.

~~~
fredophile
I have a hard time believing that Google served so many ads that 2/3 of the
screen were covered in ads. I just tried a few searches and in three fairly
generic searches I only saw ads in one of them. The search with ads had three
clearly marked ads, one above the search results and two to the right. What
search terms are you using that give you these results?

Somewhere else in the thread you mentioned that you reformatted to get rid of
some trojans and adware. Do you still see as many ads now that you've
reformatted the machine? The descriptions of the types of ads you were seeing
make me think that you had something on the machine that was actively
inserting ads into html that it received.

