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Thread: ad blocking is immoral

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    ad blocking is immoral

    Look out. Mad person on the internet.

    The argument at the link above is that using any form of ad-blocking software in your browser is immoral. The basic argument is this...

    When a content publisher places ads on his/her website, it is under the assumption that he/she is bartering with you. That barter is, in exchange for glancing over the advertisements (even if for only a fraction of a second), you can read all the content he/she has created. It is that simple.
    This is, of course, nonsense. The world wide web allows me to read freely available web content in any way i see fit. If you don't want me to read it, don't publish it, or hide it until I pay. If people create web sites and want to make money, they have to accept that the user has control over what they see. Its a fact, and thats how the web was designed from the outset. The only immorality here, comes from people who put up web content to attract visitors, get those visitors and then complain about those visitors not behaving in a way that makes that site money. Being banned from the internet would be too good for these people .

    Adverts are an inconvenience, thats why there are ad-blockers. A mature adult can decide for themselves that they do not want to buy anything or be sold to - so ignoring adverts, either by not looking at them (and lets face it, the majority of us have a blind spot for irrelevant content anyway) or asking the browser to render content in a certain way i.e. no adverts, no css, no javascript, no cookies etc... On the web, the visitor is king, and has the control. It takes a certain kind of person to see the visitor, who browses the web they want they want, as some sort of thief. And its not a nice kind of person either.

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Ad blockers immoral How droll! Good Content Rules - If I get good service (customer, or product and preferably both) then I don't need ads to direct me to companies - I go back voluntarily! as for banner blindness this is an old but very reputable report on the phenomenon Jakob Neilson's Banner research

    WT

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by whitetiger1518 View Post
    Ad blockers immoral How droll! Good Content Rules - If I get good service (customer, or product and preferably both) then I don't need ads to direct me to companies - I go back voluntarily! as for banner blindness this is an old but very reputable report on the phenomenon Jakob Neilson's Banner research

    WT
    Thanks for that link. Eye tracking research is one of the technologies behind the "cheap Canadian meds" sales style of webpage used in marketing courses. They are designed to be scanned, not read. The viewer zips down the long page and just absorbs the fact that there is loads of stuff being offered, there are loads of testimonials, and there is a money back guarantee. If a manager can get the company to pay for it ...

    ... we know that there are 3 design elements that are most effective at attracting eyeballs:
    • Plain text
    • Faces
    • Cleavage and other "private" body parts
    Which is why I was advocating simple web design in another thread. (I missed out on the cleavage)

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    Which is why I was advocating simple web design in another thread. (I missed out on the cleavage)
    Would be an interesting angle for websites dealing with the building trade.......



    I'd better stop there, before this thread gets sent upstairs (for completely imaginary reasons - or is that just my imagination )

    WT

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    Registered User Phil_dB's Avatar
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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    I absolutely hate adverts with a passion. They're patronising, insulting, and the quantity of them infuriating.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post

    Adverts are an inconvenience, thats why there are ad-blockers.
    Many sites are better as a result of revenue generated from advertising, - this I do not have a problem with.

    But pop-ups are a different kettle of fish altogether, - it's very aggressive.

    Is there software though that blocks any adverts - even the ones that dont pop up?

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    Registered User Magic Hans's Avatar
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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    ...
    This is, of course, nonsense. The world wide web allows me to read freely available web content in any way i see fit.
    ...


    Are you crazy??!!

    Surely, we are all totally obliged to not only scan, but to read, in depth, every ad that comes within 50 yards of our computer screens!!! And buy from every third one ....randomly if necessary!!!

    Where would we all be without the wonders of ads and popups??

    I couldn't google anything ... all my zipped files would remain that way ... spybot would be booted and AVG would be All Very Gone!!! Mozilla would be extinct. Zone alarm would be a black balled firewall. And viruses would be free to roam!!!! Facebook would be closed and Myspace would be undiscovered. Gmail would be like Gspot .... a myth.

    My computer would be up sh*t creek without a puddle!

    Not to mention all those dating .... adult fun .... and internet pwn sites, that I .... errrrrr ..... have only heard of!!!

    Long Live King Ad!!!


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    The Dashing Moderator
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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Alright, I confess, I've clearly been a Bad Person from an early age.

    When the adverts came on the TV, I would sometimes walk out of the room, get a drink or something. My parents obviously failed to counter this lax behaviour.

    Or I'd watch TV on a video and fast forward through the adverts! Nowadays with hard disk recorders this is even easier and I do it more often.

    Is there no hope for me?
    Love dance, will travel

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidY View Post
    Alright, I confess, I've clearly been a Bad Person from an early age.

    When the adverts came on the TV, I would sometimes walk out of the room, get a drink or something. My parents obviously failed to counter this lax behaviour.

    Or I'd watch TV on a video and fast forward through the adverts! Nowadays with hard disk recorders this is even easier and I do it more often.

    Is there no hope for me?
    If you are watching the programmes in-between, sorry, No.

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by bigdjiver View Post
    If you are watching the programmes in-between, sorry, No.
    should he just kill himself ? or should there be an option for advertisers to graft tv screens to his eyelids ?

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    Registered User stewart38's Avatar
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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    Look out. Mad person on the internet.

    The argument at the link above is that using any form of ad-blocking software in your browser is immoral. The basic argument is this...



    This is, of course, nonsense. The world wide web allows me to read freely available web content in any way i see fit. If you don't want me to read it, don't publish it, or hide it until I pay. If people create web sites and want to make money, they have to accept that the user has control over what they see. Its a fact, and thats how the web was designed from the outset. The only immorality here, comes from people who put up web content to attract visitors, get those visitors and then complain about those visitors not behaving in a way that makes that site money. Being banned from the internet would be too good for these people .
    Are you the person who reads the front and back pages of the newpaper in the shop,then walks off without paying for the paper.

    Same logic applies

    Who do you think pays for your 'free' Hotmail ??

    I'm happy to have adverts with Hotmail and happy to ban those that dont want the adverts

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by stewart38 View Post
    Are you the person who reads the front and back pages of the newpaper in the shop,then walks off without paying for the paper.

    Same logic applies
    Nope. I don't have a shop in my house, so its not quite the same thing. The world wide web is a network of publicly accessible pages of information made available by whoever wants to share information. I can browse these from the comfort of my own home in any way I see fit*, because i physically download them for free onto my pc first. Thats just the way the www works.

    Website owners may want to make money from their sites, and there are many that do make a fortune, but all money making schemes are a new concept, a natural expansion of the web as an information resource into a revenue stream: adverts, subscriptions, physical sales etc..may or may not appeal to certain visitors. So while adverts will be turned off by some, others don't mind, while some will never click a paypal button some will, etc... there is no point in bitching about it - the web belongs to the people browsing it. You can't demand people handle your freely given content in a specific way just because you say so! This is why net neutrality is so important, the freely available to all model must be maintained. By that I mean access itself - there is still plenty of scope for subscription only sites etc...but it is up to us what locked content we chose to pay for and what we do with it when we get it - copyright permitting of course, we can't sell on other peoples copy or use it on our own websites.


    * I may or may not even have a computer capable of displaying fancy graphics, i may be blind and have the information read out to me, i may customise all pages to render in a specific font...its up to me.


    Who do you think pays for your 'free' Hotmail ??
    Microsoft. Is this a trick question ?

    I'm happy to have adverts with Hotmail and happy to ban those that dont want the adverts
    As the owner of hotmail, that's up to you - you'll have less customers for your awful web based email system, as they discover there is better elsewhere.

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    As the owner of hotmail, that's up to you - you'll have less customers for your awful web based email system, as they discover there is better elsewhere.
    How will they discover this if what they have does what they want and works? Where is the motivation to fix something that doesn't look to be broken?

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    Registered User stewart38's Avatar
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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    Nope. I don't have a shop in my house, so its not quite the same thing. The world wide web is a network of publicly accessible pages of information made available by whoever wants to share information. I can browse these from the comfort of my own home in any way I see fit*, because i physically download them for free onto my pc first. Thats just the way the www works.

    Website owners may want to make money from their sites, and there are many that do make a fortune,



    Many dont make money and those that do may through advertising

    I pay £20 on here to support Frank costs , many dont , there are free loaders everywhere.

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by Gadget View Post
    How will they discover this if what they have does what they want and works?
    er...because they are banned for not displaying adverts they don't want.

    Where is the motivation to fix something that doesn't look to be broken?
    Not sure where you are coming from with this, it doesn't bear any relation to what was being discussed.

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by stewart38 View Post
    I pay £20 on here to support Frank costs , many dont , there are free loaders everywhere.

    The world wide web gives you unimaginable visibility of whatever it is you want to offer, there has never been anything like it in the past. As millions more people get online every year, if what you are offering is worthwhile you will get more visitors. This will cost you money - your servers need to handle the load. It stands to reason that you want to keep your server up so you look at ways of earning money from some of these people - not all of these people will want to pay, they have decided what you have is not worth paying for - or don't even care enough to decide : the "internet meh syndrome". If NO ONE wants to pay then, you may well struggle to keep your site open, but it is billions of web sites you are competing against - it was always going to be hard to get visitors who wander buy, even regular ones, to support all the sites they browse.

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    There was a good programme on Radio 4 a few months ago about how businesses make money when the internet makes so much available for free.

    Radio 4 usually only leaves "listen again" links online for 7 days, but surprisingly the Radio 4 link to this programme still works. Listen here

    Some words about the programme here:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/inb...20090108.shtml
    and here:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7811481.stm
    Love dance, will travel

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    When a content publisher places ads on his/her website, it is under the assumption that he/she is bartering with you. That barter is, in exchange for glancing over the advertisements (even if for only a fraction of a second), you can read all the content he/she has created. It is that simple.
    A content publisher can make any assumption they like - it doesn't automatically follow that it's a reasonable assumption or that any particular content user will make the same assumption. I might assume that readers of my [hypothetical] blog will want to send me gifts for the unimaginably wise yet hilarious insights I share with them, but it's hardly a moral contract. If you want to protect the way people access your content then the minimum you have to do is to get them to agree to it (for example there are restrictions on how you can use a site such as this one, which you have to agree to when you register as a user). If I make content freely available, then it's completely up to the user whether they choose to look at the ads or not, and this includes the use of ad blockers. If you take the quoted argument further you could say that nobody should use anti-virus software, in case someone has published content on the assumption that readers are happy to barter the right to read it in exchange for having their PC infected.

    The analogy of reading the newspaper without buying it is misleading. I am free to non-invasively inspect any goods before buying them. If the supplier of a publication chooses to allow me to completely read it that's up to them. Some publications use plastic bags precisely to prevent you from doing this, which is completely their right. In fact if I walked into the newsagent every day and read the paper without buying it, it's not the newspaper publisher who has the most reason to complain, but the newsagent - I am taking up space in the shop and possibly making it more inconvenient for other customers, without buying anything. I am not damaging the interests of the newspaper publisher in any way, since I never had any intention of buying the newspaper in the first place. As Nick correctly says, on the internet I am using my own equipment and paying someone for the connection, so there is no equivalent of the newsagent.

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidY View Post
    There was a good programme on Radio 4 a few months ago about how businesses make money when the internet makes so much available for free.


    It's a whole new opportunity. A modern day gold rush. Traditional shops expanded onto the web to take advantage of the very cheap distribution channel. 20 years ago the idea of producing one catalogue (and a highly interactive catalogue at that) which could be viewed and ordered from by anyone anywhere in the world was the stuff of science fiction.

    Then of course there were businesses that sprung up to use the web as their shop front, realising that there was no need for a real high street shop. The successful ones; amazon, ebay etc...judged the emerging market right and gained the trust of the buying public.

    The web also gives an opportunity for purely digital distribution. With no physical media needed, the overheads are tiny in comparison. This area has been the slowest to develop due to companies that own the content that people really want to buy - books, music etc... more concerned with maximising profits where possible than giving the public what they want. We're getting there now though.

    But probably the biggest thing about the www is it enables everyone to get online and offer any content they like - and with such a huge market of potential viewers - even a small percentage willing to give a few pence or buy a t-shirt makes a viable business. Look at www.xkcd.com (author now a professional cartoonist and speaker) and http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ for examples.

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidY View Post
    Alright, I confess, I've clearly been a Bad Person from an early age.

    When the adverts came on the TV, I would sometimes walk out of the room, get a drink or something.

    Is there no hope for me?
    It's ok.. People like me counter people like you. Adverts are like mini-films for those of us with short attention spans.

    You get a start, a middle and an "exciting" end in just 3 minutes. I have been known to watch programs I've taped on our PVR and skip forward through the adverts only to stop.. rewind and watch a new Advert I've not seen yet. I even own a DVD full of Adverts! .. well , ok.. Public information films.. but just like adverts they're trying to sell you something.. just what they're trying to sell you is common sense and not a new 1/2 price sofa !!

    I have to admit.. adverts today do not have the same gripping quality of adverts of yester-year. When bicycle riding bread boys would deliver bread to " top of t'world" and metallic aliens would mock our use of unmashed potatoes. When black clad James bond types would risk life and limb all because the lady had a choccie craving, When demented housewives would break the fourth wall and do a song and dance number over the merits of a deodorising carpet talc. When yellow yeti type creatures would get gender confused and ask their male friend to be their Mummy and to tell the audience about the Honey! When secret Lemonade drinkers would get up in the middle of the night for a quick quaff.. before heading home to father future punk rock singer songwriters named after "The King!" and when young love came a close second to a frozen Beefburger !!

    No, I don't want no adverts.. nor do I want more adverts!.. what I want is BETTER adverts.

    I even have a link to old Adverts in my favourites!! if you're sad like me you can look at the heyday of televisual advertisement here

    -->

    http://www.classictvads.co.uk

    Yes I'm sad.. and proud of it

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    Re: ad blocking is immoral

    Quote Originally Posted by Beowulf View Post
    It's ok.. People like me counter people like you. Adverts are like mini-films for those of us with short attention spans.
    A good point, and some are worth watching regardless of what they are selling, and they do stick with you if they make an impression.

    However, TV adverts and web adverts are 2 very different mediums - TV is obviously quite a mature medium, the www much less so - there is no real policing of web adverts .e.g the pop ups made to look like a normal windows box, informing you that "your computer is at risk" and "spyware detected" etc... that sort of deception was banned years ago on TV*. Not only should people filter the content on pages they don't want, its actually advisable for the less technically savvy to have ad-blocking set as a default.


    * TV adverts used to have fake "news readers" advertising products or a close up of a product to make it appear bigger...etc...all of which is now banned.

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