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Avoiding ads and completely removing ads are two different things. Avoiding ads is just not paying attention to them, which most people who give their content a

Avoiding ads and completely removing ads are two different things. Avoiding ads is just not paying attention to them, which most people who give their content and services away free of charge in exchange for displaying ads are still making money from those users, even if the user doesn't think they are... CPM ads... Sure the quality of payouts on CPM is based also on click through ratios, but even at the lost CPM it's still something. Now completely removing the ad using JavaScript also kills that CPM revenue. These people are leeches. I see removing ads on a site the same way I see pirating movies... Don't want to pay for the cost of a movie ticket because they're so outrageous? Then wait for the movie to come out on DVD, get cheaper, and possibly hit the TV and watch it then... But don't go out and pirate the movie because you feel entitled to watching it free of charge. Same thing with Gmail, or any service that is ad supported. You are not entitled to using that service free of charge... You are entitled to using it by enduring the advertisements. Removing them is costing the provider money without even recouping a bit of it. You come to my site, watch a video or view a gallery of pictures or read a bunch of text, whatever... Still costs me money, If I make a penny off you, it's better than nothing... If I make a penny off every user who visits my site, and 100 people come, that's a dollar a day, $30 a month... Paying the bare minimum at least the cost of the VPS I run to give you that content... Completely remove my ads and guess what... I am now paying $30/mo and it's no longer feasible for me to entertain or offer you something without charging you for it... Guess what? Service gets shut down, and then you spend your time griping about how all the good free services end up shutting down and that you wish you could have donated or even paid a small monthly fee to keep it alive... But in reality, all you had to do was endure a simple Adsense block that wasn't even intrusive, but you felt entitled to view the content or use the service while blocking it... And now your service is gone.

OvidNaso 13y ago
You're using a lot of strong language concerning the morality of user action on service revenue, while ignoring your apparent apathy toward the financial benefit of your advertisers. This seems to happen quite often. When the service isn't getting paid because of blocked ads, the users are 'leeches' and 'entitled', but when the advertisers aren't by the avoiders there is no equivalent outrage.
CodeMage 13y ago
Let me propose to you a similar claim, presented from a different angle: you are not automatically entitled to any revenue for something you created and published on the Internet. Even though you slapped ads on your site, that doesn't mean users must interacts with those ads in a way that will prove you with revenue. The one way to ensure that anyone who uses your site will provide you with revenue is to make them pay for it. There's nothing inherently wrong with that: it has its pros and cons, like every other business model. What I'm trying to get across to you is the idea that the morality of ads and ads blocking isn't as simple and clear-cut as you obviously like to think. Calling people who use ad blockers leeches won't solve whatever concrete problem made you post such a bitter comment. Here's a question for you: is it okay for me to go to your site and then, after the content is rendered, use Evernote Clearly (or some other readability tool) to re-render that content without any ads? If not, why? Is it because Clearly is another program and you drew an arbitrary line at using software instead of, say, covering parts of screen with paper? On the other hand, if you answered "yes" to the question about using a readability tool, then would it be "okay" if I used some tool that behaves just as if the ads were being rendered, but it doesn't render them? I'm guessing "no", because that starts to sound unethical. So how about a separate extension that auto-activates a readability tool after the page is rendered? In other words, where do you draw the line? Or better yet, can you draw the line as clearly as you thought and enjoy your moral high ground? Or should you try to be more flexible and realize that you can't really have it all and there are always trade-offs in every approach you might take? Maybe it just boils down to a realization that "all complex ecosystems have parasites" [1] and it's not necessarily a bad thing. [1]: http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt

OvidNaso 13y ago

You're using a lot of strong language concerning the morality of user action on service revenue, while ignoring your apparent apathy toward the financial benefit of your advertisers. This seems to happen quite often. When the service isn't getting paid because of blocked ads, the users are 'leeches' and 'entitled', but when the advertisers aren't by the avoiders there is no equivalent outrage.

CodeMage 13y ago

Let me propose to you a similar claim, presented from a different angle: you are not automatically entitled to any revenue for something you created and published on the Internet. Even though you slapped ads on your site, that doesn't mean users must interacts with those ads in a way that will prove you with revenue. The one way to ensure that anyone who uses your site will provide you with revenue is to make them pay for it. There's nothing inherently wrong with that: it has its pros and cons, like every other business model. What I'm trying to get across to you is the idea that the morality of ads and ads blocking isn't as simple and clear-cut as you obviously like to think. Calling people who use ad blockers leeches won't solve whatever concrete problem made you post such a bitter comment. Here's a question for you: is it okay for me to go to your site and then, after the content is rendered, use Evernote Clearly (or some other readability tool) to re-render that content without any ads? If not, why? Is it because Clearly is another program and you drew an arbitrary line at using software instead of, say, covering parts of screen with paper? On the other hand, if you answered "yes" to the question about using a readability tool, then would it be "okay" if I used some tool that behaves just as if the ads were being rendered, but it doesn't render them? I'm guessing "no", because that starts to sound unethical. So how about a separate extension that auto-activates a readability tool after the page is rendered? In other words, where do you draw the line? Or better yet, can you draw the line as clearly as you thought and enjoy your moral high ground? Or should you try to be more flexible and realize that you can't really have it all and there are always trade-offs in every approach you might take? Maybe it just boils down to a realization that "all complex ecosystems have parasites" [1] and it's not necessarily a bad thing. [1]: http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt