I got a popup with a countdown forcing me to leave it open for at least 5 seconds before I could close the popup, with the following text: > We noticed that yo

I got a popup with a countdown forcing me to leave it open for at least 5 seconds before I could close the popup, with the following text: > We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.com. For the best experience, please whitelist the site. I've stated before[1] here how I feel about anti-adblock popups. If you don't want me to view your content because I refuse to view ads, I'll respect your wishes and move on. However, I don't like being lied to. Sure, in an indirect economic sense, viewing Bloomberg's content without viewing ads will use their server cycles without providing them income, which in the long run could cause them to run low on funds and have to cut spending on servers, which could adversely affect the performance and content on the site, if Bloomberg continues to choose to operate on this business model. So technically yes, going on the website with an ad blocker is one factor (of many, and not the primary factor) which could hurt site performance and content. But the wording here is very ambiguous. Nontechnical users reading this text would likely believe from reading this that there is some technical reason that ad blockers directly slow down website performance and content. And this is not the case; the direct impact of ad blockers is to improve the performance of websites and improve the viewing of content. Unless we are to believe that Bloomberg is technically ignorant, this ambiguity is intended to deceive. I'll add this to the list of unethical behaviors encouraged by advertising. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11901684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11901684