Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

Sorry for posting so much! It's just that I keep wanting to post this and keep forgetting it, so I want to do it while my tiny brain still remembers!

Anyway, I'm just curious, but what are your views of blocking ads/ plugins? Personally I have ad-block, but I use it very conservatively, and I choose not to automatically enable flash. I only use adblock when a website has ads that are so intrusive that I literally have difficulty using the webpage without adblock (since at least that way my view doesn't go to another webpage) or I REALLY don't like the agenda of the website (like, I'd turn it on just in case if I had to do research on the WBC site). I figure while my choice doesn't make much of a difference, it feels like the right thing for me, personally, to do, though I don't bash other people who disagree (and I generally keep my difference in opinion to myself). Plus, there's the rare 1/ billion chance I find something interesting or new from an ad. (And I'm not saying it's evil. A little while after we finally upgraded from dial-up to "always on" internet, we got a virus that barraged our computer with ads. It wasn't really useable until I found some sort of proto-adblock available back then.)

At the same time, I feel like not automatically enabling flash is justified. First off, it's something you have to go out of your way to download in the first place, so if I don't opt into an "extra feature" all the time I don't feel too bad. More importantly though, most flash ads are obtrusive and from what I hear, may potentially leave your computer vulnerable. So yeah, I feel like I'm not keeping people from their freedom of speech in this case, I'm just choosing whether or not I let them use a microphone to get to me after I've head what they have to say, instead of just automatically, since they can still yell to try and get my attention if I decline, even if it is slightly less effective, in their eyes.

What do you all think about adblock and enabling/ disabling other plugins?

Personally, I have no qualms about using adblock. There was a time where I whitelisted certain websites, but it started to really lag my browser, some of the ads became really intrusive, and in the case of disabling adblock on video hosting sites I was getting sick of having to watch the same ad 50+ times a day before watching a video. In a perfect world I would disable adblock and not feel constantly annoyed, but this is not that perfect world

any ads that does autoplay is a blight on the internet, and i blocked those with adblock.

I block it all and don't feel bad about it. I have no justification, I simply don't want to see ads period.

I've gotten viruses from ads, not to mention most ads gain money for the website via clicks, not views, not to mention lag, intrusiveness and making the whole internet experience pleasurable. This, plus the fact that there are no (and I mean NO) one on this planet I hate more than advertisers, like a seething hostility to the point I can't stand to be in the same room as a TV playing commercials half the time. I only disable it for Youtube channels that I care about more than my hatred of Advertisers.

This, and the fact that I use Noscript (God send of an Addon), and only allow the addresses needed for a site to work, which would block many ads anyway. Like I said, I've almost lost my laptop too many times to viruses and malware I could trace back to ads.

Maybe if advertisements weren't so intrusive, laggy, buggy, and dangerous, so many people wouldn't use adbock, just a thought.

Same here.

I could not use this website without ad blocker. Not without hearing anti-smoker ads autoplaying at max volume to blow out my speakers, or experiencing endless and ruthless lag.

Hearing a gasping croaking voice scream at me about throat cancer that i cant pause, mute, or even find, isn't what I want to hear browsing cute animal pictures.

I don't use adblock, because I watch a lot of Let's Players and don't want to take away their ad revenue. It's part of the capitalist environment. Commercials are annoying, but when someone's giving you hours of otherwise free entertainment, it's reasonable to sit through the occasional ad to kick them a little money.

Ad block is completely justified; ads are distracting, take up bandwidth, slow down your computer and can even be harmful. I actually don't use adblock, I use uBlock Origin which I've heard does actually toggle the ad counter so that content creators still get money from your views.

I'm probably a little more on the "unethical" side, but I wouldn't say it's unethical. I just think we feel entitled. The Internet isn't free, but we have historically been able to access just about anything on it for no cost beyond our ISP's. There's no real justification for us using ad blockers, and they certainly do hurt the site if used in great enough numbers.
 
I know it requires money to run and hold a site, period. The people who should pay should really be the people who use the services and not the people who provide them. That's why I can support something as passive as (some) ads that help support the site without me having to pay upfront or donate.

• As such, I I do lower my ad blocker for sites I frequently regularly.

I don't lower it for sites I go to infrequently, because I wouldn't really be supporting them even with ads, but removing those ads does generally improve the site experience for me.

• But I hold no reservations in using ad blockers for sites that have ads that are intrusive to me using the site or services.

There comes a point at which you cannot use the site as intended due to the ads. That's the point at which I'll choose to block any ad on the site, because I'm using a site and providing their funds for a subpar product due to the page being slow or me not being able to consume whatever it is I came there for. They still get my pageviews though, so it's not like I'm not supporting it at all.

So here's my thought process:

1. A site doesn't run without money.
2. The people who should pay anything, Internet or not, is people who use the services. I get paid to do my job. I pay others to do their job or to provide services. "Because Internet" doesn't change that.
3. As such, how do I best and consistently "pay" to receive those services?
   • Donate?
   • Pay upfront?
   • Don't pay and let others do it/let the services die?
   • Allow ads which tend to be passive and don't impede me receiving the services of the site?

So the last point is my stance and how I act in practice.

I'm in the same boat as Ryumaru Borike.

I just don't trust ads. I'd love to let the ads be in order to ensure content creators and websites get revenue, but I'd much rather minimize the chance of getting viruses and malware. My old craptop pretty much needs script and ad blocking in order to function properly, otherwise everything would just crash and burn.

There needs to be a more efficient way of ensuring content creators get the money and funding they deserve. While ads are the easiest way of doing so, they can also be downright harmful to the everyday user. Not just mildly annoying.

I tried whitelisting some pages and slowy but surely the ads started to get obnoxious yet again, some ads even take you to new pages that download crap to your Pc (Or the auto play ones, my God) so I went Adblock and never looked back, I do feel guilty sometimes and from what I can tell this is mostly fault of the companies like Adsense that allows that kind of annoying advertisement on purpose and some pages do try to fix the problem but until there is a new method to help content creators I won't whitelist anything

I use adblock to please the ghost of Lenin.

(But actually because Youtube's pre-video ads are a form of torture and shameless capitalism/consumerism is terrible.)

What Ryumaru and Muumi said. I've had viruses and junk slip through invisible ads and pop-ups before.

If it's a site I really trust, then yeah I'll turn off ad blocker, but otherwise I keep it on.

We have laws on how loud TV commercials can be, there needs to be laws like that for Internet ads. Also laws against auto playing ads, that is bullshit.

If they are willing to apply these things to all ads I'll happily unblock many of the websites I go on, but fucking hell is it annoying.

When I open a youtube video and have my ears blown out from the volume of the ad then they wonder why people are blocking ads.

Blocking advertisement has more ethical uses on my eyes. Sure, the websites needed money to run this site, but they won't know that since it's just mostly client-side and making no harm to both the actual web owners and the advertisers. The ads are just there, but our blockers just hide it from our eyes.

Here's an idea: replace all online advertising with only images you can click to get to the product, and include a place to donate money to the site like Reddit does. No more intrusive ads, less of a worry about loss in profits, and you probably will have less people blocking as a result. I suppose eventually the site providers will learn the hard way that having intrusive ads leads to more people blocking resulting in even less revenue than they would've had otherwise had they just used normal image ads in the first place. Pop-ups and videos and especially autoplaying videos will always motivate blocking and loss of traffic on a website.

Blocking advertisement has more ethical uses on my eyes. Sure, the websites needed money to run this site, but they won’t know that since it’s just mostly client-side and making no harm to both the actual web owners and the advertisers. The ads are just there, but our blockers just hide it from our eyes.

Depending on what ad service is used (Probably Adsense) most of the income is based on clicks on the ad. There is some income you can get for having tons of ad impressions but clicks is where most of the money is at. The former is not affected by adblock but the latter can get its income punctured by it

I do see part of the rationale for ads blocking being unethical on ad-driven sites. If most everyone is encouraged to blocks ads, then click-based ad-supported websites cannot function and we can risk losing something we have always enjoyed for free

But unfortunately it is very hard to be sympathetic when most ads are intrusive/dangerous

KYM is virtually impossible to use without adblock. Nearly all ads on KYM create autoplaying video which taxes our limited bandwidth as well as disrupts what we are hearing. Some are links to malware sites, some generate intrusive popups or redirect you away from KYM.

I never click on ads anyway. I strictly avoid them. I know that so much dangerous malware can be obtained from them. So I adblock. Sorry various websites but my PC security > your income

If the KYM staff (and other websites) want to see this changed, they need to find a way to control the ads more. Numerous times we've had people complain about the ads and the answer has always been "adblock" from other users. The staff can't leave things the way they are if the want more ad revenue.

The reason I actually got adblock and ghostery is because of KYM and to an extent Youtube. The ads are actually one of the big reasons I don't like using mobile because I basically can't hear my own music when autoplay ads randomly turn it off and I am consistently redirected to the app store. I've noticed generally mobile sites are way worse with pop-ups and since mobile devices are already crashy and laggy it just becomes worse.

But yeah kym's ads are awful and every time I feel bad about it and whitelist the site I end up quickly regretting it and turning it back on. I don't like my music being interrupted at all. Like I said before Youtube is also a form of torture as someone said above. Usually you'll get the same ad playing all day for every video and sometimes I just take my headphones out and do something else until it's over because I can't stand it. I remember one day when I swear there was a glitch because this 5 minute long unskippable Skylanders ad played before every video. However like others have said I usually do let ads run whether I'm watching them or not if it's someone I really like especially if they make a living off of Youtube.

Generally over time I've gotten more and more intolerant of ads to where I'm like Ryumaru and watching normal television is torture. I use adblock, paid satelite radio, paid streaming services, etc. so I've grown very used to not needing to see ads generally.

It's kinda sad, to be honest. It would be so much easier if advertisers have their own code of ethics. Sadly, this is not the case on major sites. Even google ads does some misconduct on their ads.

I've always had it in my mind that if you are never going to click an ad, blocking it does no more harm than is already done.

@Ryu

True. KYM hasn't lost money from me due to my adblocking since I never click on ads anyway. Makes no difference

But what does make a difference is the greater scale of everyone doing it. Encouraging everyone to block ads can be seen as unethical. Too bad its the only advise you get when ads ruin your experience. And so far everyone is encouraged to block ads because nothing is being done about how awful they are.

It's up to advertisers to fix this, but they probably think the solution is to make ads more attention grabbing, not less.

If you're not using AdBlock, you're internetting wrong.

@BSoD

Sadly, bringing more attention is a top priority for advertisers. They just often overdo it and make it hard for users to focus on the actual webpage. Because of this, and the possible security risks that comes froms ads, they give more than enough reason for everyone to use adblocks. Some web browsers even have adblocks built-in. Maxthon, for example, have adblock plus as an actual built-in feature. Security has always been a priority for browsers, and if the security risks and poor implementation of ads gets worse, other browsers may also do it for the sake of attracting users.

@BSoD That's just it, it's up to the advertisers to make ads safer and less intrusive. The problem is that is not what advertisers are trained to do. Ads are suppose to grab your attention, that's their point, making them smaller and quieter is against their trade, their teachings and their business model. At the same time, they aren't programmers either, nor do they have the resources, or intent, to make their ads virus free and run efficiently.

The only thing that is going to get their attention and there response to the problem is money loss. The only thing that is going to lose money for them is, of course, blocking the Ads. However, this also hurts the person or site hosting the ads, and since they aren't a big business or rich like the advertisers are, they get hurt way more than the advertisers do.

The solution really is stuff like Patreon, where well known content creators can receive donations to help with the costs of what they do. I've known sites who use donation widgets right on their site, asking for a thousand dollars for server fees and getting $1200 in a week. I honestly feel that fixing the ads themselves is a lost cause, and moving away from them for content creators is the solution.

Not everyone can do this, you have to be reasonably big and popular, and even still, you might have to pull from ads, but complete reliance on ads, and expecting everyone to subject their computers to lag and viruses while at the same time making the experience you are providing unpleasurable from the ads themselves doesn't make sense to me.

Even for stuff like Youtube ads, unless I really care about the creator (like the Zaibatsu or JonTron) I don't disable ads, especially if they are only providing five minute or less videos. A recent example is SiN, who makes TF2 videos put up a video asking people to disable adblock for him, when his videos are two minutes long max. No one wants to sit through a 30 second ad to watch a one minute video, but he is so popular that he should have no problem getting donations (he sure as hell gets a lot of hats (which cost real world money) from donations) I feel the donation route can work if more people use it and make it known.

I whitelist some sites that I trust and/or want to support. However I use Adblock for everything else because ads are annoying. Simple as that.

I use Adblock mostly becuase i can get viruses from the ads what appears so i block those and anonying ads when use autoplay or without mute option.

As much as I want to support the sites that I visit and trust, it just isn't worth risking security, performance, etc. due to an auto-playing/pop-up/page-redirecting advertisement coming in and screwing everything up.
Yes, I am aware that site owners/operators/administrators make money off of ad revenue, but no, I'm not going to send in my address and personal info for a "free" iPad, no, I don't care about that free client download for Minecraft with "additional software" included, and NO, I do NOT want to find out how eating crystallized watery scabs can help with "weight" loss.
If advertisements weren't so shady and intrusive, or if there were some sort of quality control, I'd keep AdBlock off; more money for the sites. But this is the internet, an easily-manipulable network in which anyone can anonymously do anything with little-to-no consequence; as a result, malignancy is omnipresent. I'm not willing to potentially sacrifice my security, devices, and the very roof I live under, for the sake of helping some site runners earn a few extra cents.

I use a combination of Adblock Plus and Privacy Badger. The way I have things set up, Privacy Badger is always turned on as a privacy enhancing default. If I feel the ads are not reduced enough, or not reduced in the right way, or if I just really feel like punishing this or that site(I'm still salty about Youtube, Google!), then I resort to Adblock.

I'm happy to say that, for KYM, Privacy Badger has proven more than sufficient. It doesn't block all the ads, yet I haven't encountered a single autoplay, pop-up, or other annoying ad since.

I used to use Ghostery, but when I learned it was owned by an advertising company, I felt like it couldn't be trusted. Privacy Badger is made by Mozilla and actually based on Adblock Plus, and I feel it does a much better job. Its UI is simple and easy to use, and each tracker it detects can be individually toggled. It actually sort of "learns" what things are tracking you across multiple websites, so it "learns" what to block and not block as you use it more. First time I used it, it barely blocked anything, but after a few hours of browsing as normal it basically already had everything figured out. Also, advertisers who actually honor "Do not track" settings in the browser are automatically unblocked by Privacy Badger, so it doubles as a carrot and a stick for the Internet ad industry. You should consider taking a look at it, Sam.

I fully use adblock. Not only is there almost always complaints about pop up, autoplaying, or malware ads on most sites I visit but I'm never going to bother clicking on any of the ads to begin with. If I wanted to get free big macs, I'd go to McDonald's official site and download the coupon myself.

It's like arguing about whether you should use a DVR or not.

yes i use adblock. Ads have gotten too obtrusive. If there was an option to make ads less obtrusive I'd chose that but so far you have to whitelist and allow all ads or just straight up block them.

I'm surprised bandwidth hasn't been brought up more. The main reason I use it is because ads eat up data I could otherwise use for something more productive.

Honestly, using adblock saves a lot of trouble with ads. I feel blessed to have it installed.

I use Adblock Plus. I'm not going to justify it.

Basically for a long time Ads where the greatest source of all my Viruses. About 90%+ of them would come from ads, and oftentimes the ads themselves hardly advertized anything interesting to me.

Not to mention after a few years of hunting autoplaying ads and never permanently fixing the issue, I decided fuck it I'm not going to deal with this bullcrap anymore. I was tired of getting viruses and I was tired of getting lagged out or earraped by the damn ads so I finally gave in and started using Adblock after being a warrior against it for so long.

Oh, oh, oh, and you know those fucking websites people tend to link from Facebook (I love you George Takei, but you are horrible about this)? And how they divide barely any content across 3 Or More Pages just to get more Ad Revenue and sometimes intentionally not show the end of the article? Fuck that practice with a naily baseball bat. Or Adblock.

By default, I use Adblock plus for all websites I visit. if I start to use the website more often, and I trust it to not have intrusive ads or ones that pose a threat to my PC, I'll usually whitelist the site. And sometimes, for anything where I just don't like whoever is hosting the page, or I view a YouTube video of someone I hate for example, I will be a petty bastard and make sure to turn it back on.

Cool, thanks for the feedback! It raised some points I didn't think of before, and I love when that happens. Sorry if I came of all holier-than-thou at all.

I use adblock for everything because of things like:

1) Autoplay ads are annoying as feck
2) Better performance in general
3) One time I tried to keep autoplay off for a site I usually frequent but I got a pop up ad all of a sudden that freaked me out and I kept it on ever since

I'm not risking viruses and whatnot, so while I would like to not use adblocker for some stuff, I just can't risk it.