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Enabling click-to-play for Flash eliminates - in my experience - more than 99% of the truly obnoxious ads. For example, I literally can't think of a time that I

Enabling click-to-play for Flash eliminates - in my experience - more than 99% of the truly obnoxious ads. For example, I literally can't think of a time that I've come across an ad that auto-plays audio when I've had click-to-play enabled. I'm sure it's happened in my web browsing history, but I can't recall a time. I can't help but feel that if people truly believed it when they said, "I'm okay with seeing ads - just not the obnoxious ones," then they would enable click-to-play rather than installing an ad blocker. As it stands, though, the most-upvoted arguments in favor of wholesale ad blocking are - and will forever be - presented as the trump cards: "Think of the children," and "I'm totally fine with ads - but the bad actors ruined it for me!" Ad blocking isn't piracy - I want to make it very clear that I believe that. That said, I find the arguments in favor of ad blocking to often be similar in flavor to the arguments in favor of piracy: "I'd pay for content, if only they'd charge a reasonable amount for it." Since "reasonable" is subjective, there's no response that can be made. (There are other arguments in favor of ad blocking, such as the aforementioned Zappos Boots Creepiness.)

anonymousab 11y ago
Click to play doesn't stop most tracking. Ads still manage to render so many mobile sites almost unusable.
Kronopath 11y ago
Tell that to the ads that are nothing but fake "Download" buttons. Hell, I once saw an ad on a webcomic website that was nothing but a gigantic "<< Back | Forward >>" image, pretending to be navigation. You can bet I turned on ad-blocking again for that site right then and there. Right now, the biggest solution to ad-blockers I'm seeing is Patreon. You like content? Fund it to keep it alive. Content creators aren't placing ads because they love having ads next to their content. They're doing it because they want to make a living doing what they like, and so far ads have been the only option. Solve that fundamental problem, and you solve the "ad-blocking" problem. The only casualty will be advertising companies and companies that depend solely on ads, and honestly? Good riddance.
- quotemstr 11y ago
  > Tell that to the ads that are nothing but fake "Download" buttons The easiest solution to the problem of fake download buttons is good old-fashioned consumer protection legislation. There are instances where commercial shenanigans are, for various subtle and complicated reasons, best solved by market forces. We are not talking about one of those situations. We are talking about something analogous to advertising patent medicine and health-promoting cigarettes.
vitd 11y ago
> I find the arguments in favor of ad blocking to often be similar in flavor to the arguments in favor of piracy: "I'd pay for content, if only they'd charge a reasonable amount for it." Since "reasonable" is subjective, there's no response that can be made. I don't believe that's similar at all to the arguments for ad blocking. With ad blocking the argument is, "You're putting your content out there for free and saying, 'please also look at and maybe click on this ad'. But there's no contract in place that says I have to. Even if I don't block it, I won't even look at it, so I might as well save the bandwidth and not even download it." That's a lot different from "I'd pay if it were a reasonable price" when they really mean, "I don't want to pay, so I'm just going to copy it for free since I know how." The ad blocking scenario is no different from, "I'm watching this TV show, but the show has stopped for a few minutes and something unrelated is on, so I'm going to the bathroom now, or to get a drink, or muting the audio or fast-forwarding."
Strilanc 11y ago
I'd enable ads - if I expected them to contain truthful and unbiased information that was useful and relevant to me. Which really goes to the crux of the problem, I think. (The useful and relevant part would probably require cutting the rate of ads drastically. The truthful and unbiased part... I have no idea. Incentives and enforcement are hard.)

anonymousab 11y ago

Click to play doesn't stop most tracking. Ads still manage to render so many mobile sites almost unusable.

Kronopath 11y ago

Tell that to the ads that are nothing but fake "Download" buttons. Hell, I once saw an ad on a webcomic website that was nothing but a gigantic "<< Back | Forward >>" image, pretending to be navigation. You can bet I turned on ad-blocking again for that site right then and there. Right now, the biggest solution to ad-blockers I'm seeing is Patreon. You like content? Fund it to keep it alive. Content creators aren't placing ads because they love having ads next to their content. They're doing it because they want to make a living doing what they like, and so far ads have been the only option. Solve that fundamental problem, and you solve the "ad-blocking" problem. The only casualty will be advertising companies and companies that depend solely on ads, and honestly? Good riddance.

quotemstr 11y ago
> Tell that to the ads that are nothing but fake "Download" buttons The easiest solution to the problem of fake download buttons is good old-fashioned consumer protection legislation. There are instances where commercial shenanigans are, for various subtle and complicated reasons, best solved by market forces. We are not talking about one of those situations. We are talking about something analogous to advertising patent medicine and health-promoting cigarettes.

vitd 11y ago

> I find the arguments in favor of ad blocking to often be similar in flavor to the arguments in favor of piracy: "I'd pay for content, if only they'd charge a reasonable amount for it." Since "reasonable" is subjective, there's no response that can be made. I don't believe that's similar at all to the arguments for ad blocking. With ad blocking the argument is, "You're putting your content out there for free and saying, 'please also look at and maybe click on this ad'. But there's no contract in place that says I have to. Even if I don't block it, I won't even look at it, so I might as well save the bandwidth and not even download it." That's a lot different from "I'd pay if it were a reasonable price" when they really mean, "I don't want to pay, so I'm just going to copy it for free since I know how." The ad blocking scenario is no different from, "I'm watching this TV show, but the show has stopped for a few minutes and something unrelated is on, so I'm going to the bathroom now, or to get a drink, or muting the audio or fast-forwarding."

Strilanc 11y ago

I'd enable ads - if I expected them to contain truthful and unbiased information that was useful and relevant to me. Which really goes to the crux of the problem, I think. (The useful and relevant part would probably require cutting the rate of ads drastically. The truthful and unbiased part... I have no idea. Incentives and enforcement are hard.)