By that logic someone can walk out of a store without paying for merchandise or leave a restaurant without paying for one’s meal. No, we are a society of laws and there is no law saying that I have to watch ads.
8 Likes
And now this from Captain Obvious.
##I’m not your ‘bro,’ dude.
And it was not even remotely an ad hom; it was an honest observation.
But your response is interesting.
Funny story about an overly aggressive online ad that was on one of my old forums years ago, before I got hip to ad blockers:
It was one of those invasive ‘rollover’ ads which was very small but very strategically placed; and when one inadvertently scrolled over it, the damn thing enlarged & took up about 75% of the page.
(It was an ad for a kid’s comedy, one which you may note that I haven’t even bothered to mention the title.)
Needless to say hitting that ad half the time when I was trying to reply to a comment was incredibly annoying to me; to the point that I made a freakin’ vow not only to never pay for the film, but to never watch it under any circumstances. I won’t let my kid watch it, and I don’t speak of it by name, to this day.
That’s just how irritated I was by an advertiser attempting to force their product into my line of view…
21 Likes
Along with a decent ad-blocker, I find FB Purity useful for taming some of the more annoying bits of Facebook. If you use it, that is. I’ve got an almost-blank account in an assumed name for keeping up with a few people who don’t really do much else.
1 Like
If you ran an ad blocker, you wouldn’t see ANY hominems.
16 Likes
Do you pee during commercials? Do you read every add in a magazine?
11 Likes
Please make sure a thorough consideration of ads includes the harm done by the content of the ads. I’m not talking about the JavaScript/Flash/whatever; I mean the ideas conveyed by the ads. Most are toxic.
7 Likes
Hi everybody!
That one knows of &|| yet. Take a pick. Not all compromises are piloted by captain obvious. Some of us play the long game. FB’s ad network isn’t going to stand forever & that can be taken to the bank.
If one doesn’t know enough about “malware” it’s prolly best to stick to other topics. Like pleading with everyone to watch commercials cuz that’ll always make one popular.
Publisher revenue methods are the publishers problem. Period. If they can’t find a method that yields the ROI they need, they either need to think of a new way or die. Sorry, but thems the breaks in this economic model we’re using.
Pffffft. Who cares. Ethics doesn’t enter into it.
This all made me think of the fact that ethics left the building, for all things digital, when the CFAA was “passed” and then retooled in 89, 94, 96, 01, 02, and 08 - but that’s just until next time The Man thinks of something we do that it doesn’t like, ex: such as that as which should be free but “infringes” on a .com’s ability to make a profit. Like AdBlockers - bet one wishes the CFAA covered those, right? Well, maybe in the next revision we can turn yet something else that is harmless into something that is criminal.
I make no apologies, the CFAA is a POS that ruins lives in exchange for protecting the corrupt & the (already) rich. Just ask Aaron. Oh wait, one can’t.
@alahmnat 's list was pretty comprehensive- that should have been the end of it.
@TobinL was right.
@Melizmatic is no ones “bro”. Nor am I for that matter.
17 Likes
I’ve seen several variations on the theme of: basic is free, if you want extra stuff please pay a minimum of X amount.
That is reasonable, and therefore something I’m willing to pay for.
15 Likes
Oh, you can totally ‘bro’ me, anytime; because you actually have the prerequisite passing familiarity.
As for that other gentleman:
16 Likes
Malware isn’t a red herring. It’s just the extremely flammable kindling on the fire.
Have you perhaps considered that I don’t think it’s reasonable for Facebook and ad networks to know everything I look at and track me around the web?
Have you considered that I may not want to download piles of pointless bullshit and bog down my machine?
Have you considered that I just don’t feel comfortable with this “deal” I never once have agreed to, but can’t negotiate with?
No. Either you haven’t. Or you simply consider the user’s half of the ethical equation completely without merit and consequence.
14 Likes
I’m actually sympathetic to the argument that kwajkid is making, but mostly because my experience online is that ads is the only way to drive this stuff. People won’t pay subscriptions to view sites like NYT/etc. Other profit models haven’t worked in the majority of cases either.
Frankly put, we can just scream how much ads suck, but we’re stuck with them until we as a group show we’re willing to entertain literally anything else. Until then, people with adblockers are essentially leeches, regardless of any self-righteous argument we make (I count myself among them, because yeah ads suck) but one without many options out of it.
Edit: I thought the AdBlock plus idea was actually decent but apparently it’s just bribery? I haven’t done enough digging to see if that’s just people being whiny or actual bribery.
The security of my machines is sacrosanct. Until advertising networks make a concerted effort to weed out malicious code from their ads, their code doesn’t run on my machines. The cost / benefit annalysis doesn’t just revolve around content and the providers of said content.
5 Likes
It’s just as easy to point out that ad networks are far worse leeches since they use consumer’s data allowances and bandwidth in massive amounts, without consent of any kind, and are fully unaccountable to their client websites and the client websites take no responsibility for the ads the networks serve out.
The ad networks aren’t paying for my data usage, I am. So they don’t get to force whatever the hell they want onto my wires and air.
Since everyone indemnifies themselves from each other, I have just as much of a right to do with my computer and data whatever I please including blocking unwelcome leeches like the ad networks, trackers and malware servers. To say that the users of adblocking are leeches is to discount the fact that ad networks are worse leeches. It’s nearly victim blaming if you ask me. Ad networks are rich and powerful and are looking for ways to force users to do things they don’t want to do.
14 Likes
To say that ad networks are worse leeches, doesn’t absolve us of the impact we have to these sites. If we’re going to do it, we might as well be honest about it rather than some of the big mental hoops I see people jumping through here.
It’s not a mental hoop. I don’t want to see ads, but if they weren’t dangerous hogs of bandwidth and attention, I’d change my tune. If a website comes to me asking for some money, I’ll consider it. And I even pay some times. Like with Patreon for podcasts and art.
I wouldn’t be a leech if given a choice. But as it stands, I’d much rather be a healthy leech than an infected hero.
And like I said earlier, it’s not my goddamn problem that sites don’t seem to be able to make money without ads. Seriously, that’s like saying shop keepers can’t make money without forcing you to get drunk first.
9 Likes
I think you have no idea how malware works.
10 Likes
9 Likes
I guess you’re against using a DVR to fast forward through commercials, too?
5 Likes
6 Likes
I never signed up for that deal. You don’t get the right to shove content I don’t want onto my computer in order to shore up a broken business model. Don’t like it? Too bad.
10 Likes
