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Indeed. People need to understand that blocking ads will harm the industry and doom the economy. I’d go as far as banning ad-block users completely from my webs

Indeed. People need to understand that blocking ads will harm the industry and doom the economy. I’d go as far as banning ad-block users completely from my website.

drivingmenuts 8y ago
Unless you're providing very specific information, good luck with that. People will just get their info elsewhere. Or, you know, someone will get the info and repost it somewhere less restrictive.
gumby 8y ago
I find this a good mechanism for determining which sites I don't care about.
- l0b0 8y ago
  Yep, browsing habits include: On medium.com or affiliated site: 40% chance of BS. Blank page with JS disabled: Built by people who would love 5 GB web pages; 80% chance of BS. "Please disable your ad blocker": Only people who love ads are real people; 90% chance of BS. "You seem to be offline." Built by idiots; 100% chance of BS.
  - slater 8y ago
    "Re-enable tracking" 100% chance of ... CBS! :D ducks rotten veg
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    Let's not forget: Loads almost 500k in 0.75 seconds, CSS looks a decade old, uses no obvious JS: 95% likely to be exactly the content I want with none of that nonsense because it was written by a domain expert for fun, not ad revenue.
  - gordaco 8y ago
    Also, enabling Firefox's reader mode (accessed quickly by pressing F9, at least in Windows) gets rid of the "please disable your ad blocker" and similar nagware most of the time.
strathmeyer 8y ago
Lying to people in order to advertise to them is what is harming the industry
arghwhat 8y ago
Great, then I can easily see that I do not wish to access your website! Ads should be blocked relentlessly until companies realize what reasonable, secure and tasteful ads look like, instead of the intrusive malware-ridden pile that interrupt our lives at the current time. Tracking, on the other hand, will never have a place in this world.
- EduardoBautista 8y ago
  I mean, if you stop using their website wouldn't it be a good thing for bandwidth heavy sites like YouTube? It's kind of like a restaurant showing you the door and then saying "I didn't want to eat here anyways."
  - anonymousab 8y ago
    I would be happy to accept denied access to most sites before loading their content. It'd be cool if browsers could send some sort of do not track header, that sites could then use to refuse to serve you any content. Assuming that they actually do want none of those users to consume their content in that way.
    - MBCook 8y ago
      They can. Or could. The world chose to ignore the header.
    - mediumdeviation 8y ago
      DNT headers are a thing. They were proposed by Mozilla originally, and its use was suppose to be opt in (and of course so is any compliance by the site in question). Then IE10 turned it on by default, making it pretty much completely useless as a signal for site owners.
      - gordaco 8y ago
        Changing the default value of DNT to "on", so that you needed to opt in if you wanted tracking, didn't make the header "useless" for site owners. But it did make it awfully inconvenient, because it underlined an awfully inconvenient truth: if a site makes money off tracking users, then the best interest of the site is at odds with the best interest of the users. Of course, many sites still wanted tracking, so they resorted to the scummy tactic of just ignoring the header. In other words: if most users do not want to get tracked, this should have been a signal to stop fucking tracking. The fact that it didn't doesn't reflect well on sites, to put it mildly. I totally agree with josteink: this is good news because it means that anti-tracking measures are starting to hurt.
pavel_lishin 8y ago
> blocking ads will harm the industry Which industry?
- tdb7893 8y ago
  It harms all the industries where the content is ad supported, which is the majority of the Internet right now. For just what I use every day Facebook, Spotify, Google, almost all news, Youtube, Reddit, and xkcd are all add supported. I get why people don't like ads but it's clearly how an absolutely massive portion of the modern Internet is monetized right now
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    > I get why people don't like ads I don't like ads. But I positively loathe underhanded tactics ad networks utilize, all the way from the "I can disagree but see their point of view" tracking, to "what the fuck are you doing" drive-by malware installs. Fuck them, unequivocally. They're incapable or unwilling of effectively policing the content they serve, so they don't get to serve it to me.
  - thinkingemote 8y ago
    And also that the majority of techies here work for companies either directly or indirectly ad supported. I include myself in that group and I use as blockers.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
      Some of us are doing paid B2B. Not sure about relative frequency, though.
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    I don't think anyone has a problem with ads per se, as long as there aren't that many of them, they are contextual, non-intrusive, non-tracking, etc. So the problem is more about not ads, but who is controlling what ads are acceptable and how they are displayed. Imagine a web browser that doesn't let publishers decide how ads are displayed, where and how many of them. It can choose an acceptable ad format for the user, like textual non-tracking ads below the content, and if publishers want, they can use that format to put an ad here, but nowhere else. It will still permit a lot of ad supported content, but will remove all those ad surveillance capitalism incentives and clickbaity user engagement.
zahrc 8y ago
Seriously, the worst about ads is that they are, even tho we are giving out a lot of our information, not receiving interesting ones. Instagram and Facebook ads are the worst. Also: everything on my PC is English, everything. I am using English keywords only. WHY THE FUCK IS STILL EVERY AD IN GERMAN
bdcravens 8y ago
The only site I disable ad blocking for is kbb.com (Kelley Blue Book), as it's the only one that restricts that I find valuable enough. If your site is valuable enough, you'll experience the same; if you see fewer visitors after putting such a block in place, that will answer the question for you.

Indeed. People need to understand that blocking ads will harm the industry and doom the economy. I’d go as far as banning ad-block users completely from my website.

drivingmenuts 8y ago

Unless you're providing very specific information, good luck with that. People will just get their info elsewhere. Or, you know, someone will get the info and repost it somewhere less restrictive.

gumby 8y ago

I find this a good mechanism for determining which sites I don't care about.

l0b0 8y ago
Yep, browsing habits include: On medium.com or affiliated site: 40% chance of BS. Blank page with JS disabled: Built by people who would love 5 GB web pages; 80% chance of BS. "Please disable your ad blocker": Only people who love ads are real people; 90% chance of BS. "You seem to be offline." Built by idiots; 100% chance of BS.
- slater 8y ago
  "Re-enable tracking" 100% chance of ... CBS! :D ducks rotten veg
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Let's not forget: Loads almost 500k in 0.75 seconds, CSS looks a decade old, uses no obvious JS: 95% likely to be exactly the content I want with none of that nonsense because it was written by a domain expert for fun, not ad revenue.
- gordaco 8y ago
  Also, enabling Firefox's reader mode (accessed quickly by pressing F9, at least in Windows) gets rid of the "please disable your ad blocker" and similar nagware most of the time.

strathmeyer 8y ago

Lying to people in order to advertise to them is what is harming the industry

arghwhat 8y ago

Great, then I can easily see that I do not wish to access your website! Ads should be blocked relentlessly until companies realize what reasonable, secure and tasteful ads look like, instead of the intrusive malware-ridden pile that interrupt our lives at the current time. Tracking, on the other hand, will never have a place in this world.

EduardoBautista 8y ago
I mean, if you stop using their website wouldn't it be a good thing for bandwidth heavy sites like YouTube? It's kind of like a restaurant showing you the door and then saying "I didn't want to eat here anyways."
- anonymousab 8y ago
  I would be happy to accept denied access to most sites before loading their content. It'd be cool if browsers could send some sort of do not track header, that sites could then use to refuse to serve you any content. Assuming that they actually do want none of those users to consume their content in that way.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    They can. Or could. The world chose to ignore the header.
  - mediumdeviation 8y ago
    DNT headers are a thing. They were proposed by Mozilla originally, and its use was suppose to be opt in (and of course so is any compliance by the site in question). Then IE10 turned it on by default, making it pretty much completely useless as a signal for site owners.
    - gordaco 8y ago
      Changing the default value of DNT to "on", so that you needed to opt in if you wanted tracking, didn't make the header "useless" for site owners. But it did make it awfully inconvenient, because it underlined an awfully inconvenient truth: if a site makes money off tracking users, then the best interest of the site is at odds with the best interest of the users. Of course, many sites still wanted tracking, so they resorted to the scummy tactic of just ignoring the header. In other words: if most users do not want to get tracked, this should have been a signal to stop fucking tracking. The fact that it didn't doesn't reflect well on sites, to put it mildly. I totally agree with josteink: this is good news because it means that anti-tracking measures are starting to hurt.

pavel_lishin 8y ago

> blocking ads will harm the industry Which industry?

tdb7893 8y ago
It harms all the industries where the content is ad supported, which is the majority of the Internet right now. For just what I use every day Facebook, Spotify, Google, almost all news, Youtube, Reddit, and xkcd are all add supported. I get why people don't like ads but it's clearly how an absolutely massive portion of the modern Internet is monetized right now
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  > I get why people don't like ads I don't like ads. But I positively loathe underhanded tactics ad networks utilize, all the way from the "I can disagree but see their point of view" tracking, to "what the fuck are you doing" drive-by malware installs. Fuck them, unequivocally. They're incapable or unwilling of effectively policing the content they serve, so they don't get to serve it to me.
- thinkingemote 8y ago
  And also that the majority of techies here work for companies either directly or indirectly ad supported. I include myself in that group and I use as blockers.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    Some of us are doing paid B2B. Not sure about relative frequency, though.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  I don't think anyone has a problem with ads per se, as long as there aren't that many of them, they are contextual, non-intrusive, non-tracking, etc. So the problem is more about not ads, but who is controlling what ads are acceptable and how they are displayed. Imagine a web browser that doesn't let publishers decide how ads are displayed, where and how many of them. It can choose an acceptable ad format for the user, like textual non-tracking ads below the content, and if publishers want, they can use that format to put an ad here, but nowhere else. It will still permit a lot of ad supported content, but will remove all those ad surveillance capitalism incentives and clickbaity user engagement.

zahrc 8y ago

Seriously, the worst about ads is that they are, even tho we are giving out a lot of our information, not receiving interesting ones. Instagram and Facebook ads are the worst. Also: everything on my PC is English, everything. I am using English keywords only. WHY THE FUCK IS STILL EVERY AD IN GERMAN

bdcravens 8y ago

The only site I disable ad blocking for is kbb.com (Kelley Blue Book), as it's the only one that restricts that I find valuable enough. If your site is valuable enough, you'll experience the same; if you see fewer visitors after putting such a block in place, that will answer the question for you.