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Those bits of information exist because they have revenue-earning potential. If you block all ads, you're making providing information less profitable, which wi

by 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 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.