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When sites force you to disable adblocker to browse, do you?
- Thread starter -Pyromaniac-
- Start date
Everyone realizes that.
The problem is that everyone also realizes that advertisers cannot be trusted. The entire reason adblockers exist in the first place isn't because people get super annoyed at seeing a small rectangle of advertising on a page somewhere. It's because when you allow ads, you can get all kinds of ridiculous bullshit.
There's a reason that modern browsers come with things like popup blockers built in, and it's not because internet advertisers show restraint. We've all seen popups, popunders, ads that take over your screen and start playing loud sounds, ads that capture your mouse cursor, ads that try to convince you your computer has a virus so you should call this number or download this software, ads that open a window and won't let you close it. That's not even counting the more subtle ads that spread malware to your system without making a big deal about it.
Not all advertisers are bad. My ad network prides themselves on not doing any of that bull
No ones get podcasts via websites though, do they? I'm a giant bomb subscriber and I haven't actually been on their website in years.
Yeah - because not being content with having to not pay for something, they want to remove the best method for the people making the content to get paid for doing so. It's always someone else's fault, though.
I mostly leave instantly.
I feel like an ass towards people who work there for doing it - but ads have just become way too invasive.
There's simply no way I'm going to wait 15 seconds for a video on something I don't give the beginning of a fuck about to end before I can have 5 second of skimming through an article simply to check whether it actually seems of interest to me (in which case I go back to the beginning and read it), if it's something I've already read somewhere else but is just formulated differently, of if it's just plain and simple click bait.
I feel like an ass towards people who work there for doing it - but ads have just become way too invasive.
There's simply no way I'm going to wait 15 seconds for a video on something I don't give the beginning of a fuck about to end before I can have 5 second of skimming through an article simply to check whether it actually seems of interest to me (in which case I go back to the beginning and read it), if it's something I've already read somewhere else but is just formulated differently, of if it's just plain and simple click bait.
First post was all that was needed.
Resetera is one of VERY FEW sites I keep my ad-blocker off on.
I've mixed feelings about this. Even the website that relies most heavily on embedded ads, YouTube, has been losing money for years. Even worse, the content they've elected to subsidize heaviest, while undeniably popular, is of mixed quality and frequently is actively harmful.
So you're not producing harmful content, but still the server costs and miscellaneous production costs force you to seek revenue. Mostly this is going to be through a contract with an advertising network that essentially hires space on your server and pays you, perhaps by the click-through rate. This is where it gets gnarly for those who seek out your content. The current state of the art is rather desperate because the advertising networks have not acted in a trustworthy manner, sometimes delivering harmful content to those who visit websites, sometimes even injecting malware into computers. As a website owner you desperately need the revenue, but at the same time you must understand that the people who come for your content must also be curated. You have a duty of care. Perhaps many website owners are diligent in sticking only to ethical advertising networks, but the overall environment is one in which only a fool would trust any given website to keep the harmful stuff away.
I know, Patreon-style sponsorship is difficult to build, and clearly some people are not producing the kind of original content that can be financed in this way. They end up with a failing website that bleeds money. Nobody told you this would happen, so you blame the freeloaders who use your bandwidth without any intention of contributing. But they're not the problem, they're just a consequence of the irresponsible exploitation of desperate website owners by unscrupulous advertisers.
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I feel like this has only ever really been a niche concern and it's getting more niche by the day. Advertising networks are getting more sophisticated with what they show, and clearly this is a moot point for Youtube et al anyway - they *are* the advertising network, too.
At some point the statute of limitations has to wear off, doesn't it? If you carefully blacklist websites that use certain advertising networks that have proved harmful, then fair enough (though if you know what they are, you could simply avoid going on them thus rendering the discussion moot). But I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people using ad-blockers just use the default behaviour of blocking literally everything. At what point does a website popping up something with a pair of tits on it years ago "run out" and one decides to start paying for the content they enjoy again?
The few times I turn off my blocker on these requests I end up getting full screen ads saying subscribe to their newsletter, sign up for more features, etc, a ton of bullshit. So much so that now I generally just look elsewhere for the info.
I hate sites that do and rarely ever bother to. Only if it's something I'm really interested in.
I generally don't return
I generally don't return
It's not about tits a couple of years ago. It's about, amongst other serious concerns, an active malware injection war which the client systems and hosts are losing.
There are no sites I don't block ads for, I'll pay for a subscription but I'm not turning Ublock off.
I just leave. The sites that try to force you to disable your adblocker are ALWAYS the ones with the hideously intrusive borderline spyware ads. Screw them.
