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Writing off the effects your actions have on the future production of things you like is plainly irrational. If a site you like has created a hostile viewing ex

by natrius 16y ago

Writing off the effects your actions have on the future production of things you like is plainly irrational. If a site you like has created a hostile viewing experience, let them know. If they continue with their misguided efforts, go ahead and block ads, but you should try to ensure that they are profitable by making an effort proportional to your enjoyment of the site. Try harder to get your message across. Send them money. Do something. Doing nothing but harming their revenue stream harms yourself. If you block ads based on a broad, generic filter set, you're hurting the sites you enjoy reading, and you make no sense to me.

derefr 16y ago
I don't know what kind of surfing habits you have, but for 99% of the sites I visit, I don't have an "enjoyment of the site" to push me into being sympathetic for their financial needs. I find individual, useful bits of websites through Google or Reddit, take what I want or need from those bits, and then ignore the rest. Websites, in this way, are commodities; necessary evils to transmitting information or entertainment. I don't maintain "relationships" with these websites as if they were bands or political parties; they're more like one-night-stands. I think this is the way many people see the Internet as a whole, and that is why so many are amenable to unilateral ad blocking. There are a few websites I do visit over and over (HN, for example), and I don't block ads on those—but I wouldn't start a long-term relationship with a site like that if its ads were obnoxious.
- natrius 16y ago
  Those bits of information exist because they have revenue-earning potential. If you block all ads, you're making providing information less profitable, which will make it harder to find information in the future. Block ads on a site after you get annoyed by them. If it's a site you rarely visit, there's probably not much use in going further out of your way to help them out.
  - derefr 16y ago
    I do agree with you in principle—but it's not pragmatic, and you can't expect users to go out of their way to first look at ads, and then decide whether or not to block them. It's much more work on their part than either allowing, or blocking, everything (consider web-surfing like a flow state in programming, where having to decide whether to block an ad is an interruption that breaks flow. It's a tiny mental speed-bump that, when occurring often enough, greatly reduces overall mental velocity.) And besides it being more work, it's also annoying, like you said; choosing to block everything removes the "annoyance factor" altogether. If you have a blanket-policy ad-blocker on, you never see the really, really bad ads that animate and have sound and make you hunt through your opened-in-the-background tabs to murder them. People don't like to be annoyed, and anything they can use to prevent themselves from getting annoyed in the first place will automatically be liked, even at the expense of the ability to find information in the future. I'm not saying it's moral, or ideal, or anything like that—I'm just saying that webmasters will have to deal with (and work around) the fact that people like ad-blockers, for the same reason that people like eating fruit: it's a purely parasitic relationship where you take what you want, and the "victim," seemingly static in relation to you, can't do anything about it.
    - natrius 16y ago
      You're right that I'm probably fighting a losing battle, but I'd expect a group of people with a demonstrated proficiency in critical thinking to not take actions that make themselves worse off.

by natrius 16y ago

derefr 16y ago

I don't know what kind of surfing habits you have, but for 99% of the sites I visit, I don't have an "enjoyment of the site" to push me into being sympathetic for their financial needs. I find individual, useful bits of websites through Google or Reddit, take what I want or need from those bits, and then ignore the rest. Websites, in this way, are commodities; necessary evils to transmitting information or entertainment. I don't maintain "relationships" with these websites as if they were bands or political parties; they're more like one-night-stands. I think this is the way many people see the Internet as a whole, and that is why so many are amenable to unilateral ad blocking. There are a few websites I do visit over and over (HN, for example), and I don't block ads on those—but I wouldn't start a long-term relationship with a site like that if its ads were obnoxious.

natrius 16y ago
Those bits of information exist because they have revenue-earning potential. If you block all ads, you're making providing information less profitable, which will make it harder to find information in the future. Block ads on a site after you get annoyed by them. If it's a site you rarely visit, there's probably not much use in going further out of your way to help them out.
- derefr 16y ago
  I do agree with you in principle—but it's not pragmatic, and you can't expect users to go out of their way to first look at ads, and then decide whether or not to block them. It's much more work on their part than either allowing, or blocking, everything (consider web-surfing like a flow state in programming, where having to decide whether to block an ad is an interruption that breaks flow. It's a tiny mental speed-bump that, when occurring often enough, greatly reduces overall mental velocity.) And besides it being more work, it's also annoying, like you said; choosing to block everything removes the "annoyance factor" altogether. If you have a blanket-policy ad-blocker on, you never see the really, really bad ads that animate and have sound and make you hunt through your opened-in-the-background tabs to murder them. People don't like to be annoyed, and anything they can use to prevent themselves from getting annoyed in the first place will automatically be liked, even at the expense of the ability to find information in the future. I'm not saying it's moral, or ideal, or anything like that—I'm just saying that webmasters will have to deal with (and work around) the fact that people like ad-blockers, for the same reason that people like eating fruit: it's a purely parasitic relationship where you take what you want, and the "victim," seemingly static in relation to you, can't do anything about it.
  - natrius 16y ago
    You're right that I'm probably fighting a losing battle, but I'd expect a group of people with a demonstrated proficiency in critical thinking to not take actions that make themselves worse off.