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AdBlock Plus To Not Block All Ads

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40hz:
Also, here's some food for thought - If you block ads, then aren't you being immensely selfish? After-all it means you are leeching a service while happily off loading the cost of your usage onto your fellow netizens who don't block the ads. You are using them to subsidise your own gains.
-Eóin (December 13, 2011, 11:58 AM)
--- End quote ---

I'm a bit of an economic Darwinist when it comes to that.

You can find takers for virtually anything - as long as it's free to them.

But by the same token, it's fairly hard to make the arguement you've proven your offering's value by doing so. And in most cases, ad revenue merely allows things to continue that are of extremely marginal value to their consumers. Because advertising revenues are the ideal way to allow crappy products and services to continue. Look no further than broadcast television for 50+ years worth of examples.

I can respect soliciting donations and subscriptions.  I can respect crowd-sourcing. I can respect seeking underwriting grants. I can respect that most honest of all web revenue generators: the paywall.

But I don't have a great deal of respect for the self-righteous arguments in favor of ad supporting a website. Because that assumes the site is offering something people actually want and care about. And to be blunt, that's a very big assumption. To me, using ads to support a site amount to little more than panhandling by proxy. And I have never seen anything that was made significantly better for allowing ads. In most cases, the appearance of ads diminished it.

Charge for access, request viewers buy a membership or subscription, sell your own products or services - or run a free site. But please don't get overly self-righteous if your site can't stand on it's own two feet, and then bemoan how people are blocking 3rd party adverts when they visit.

Just my 2¢.  :)

Ath:
Isn't this the same that 'happened' to Ad-Aware some years ago? Nearly everyone used to use that to remove ad- and spy-ware from their computers, until that 1 update where they decided that some type of ads where 'allowable' (iow: you could get on that 'exclusive' list by paying). Ad-Aware still sort of lives on, but it never recovered from the damage they did to themselves.

mahesh2k:
I also see one more issue with adblockplus owners abusing some publishers. For example, what if they start to allow adsense ads on google search page but not on websites of individual publishers. I mean if you find it unethical to block ads on some small guys who survive on ad earning then surely you can't twist things this way to favor big corps. Ghostery is collecting data for Evidon and they're twisting the stuff this way. I don't see the reason why they came up with 'ad choices' opt-out feature, that seems to be leading corp lobby for ad displays.

mahesh2k:
Just to add to my previous comment of untargeted ads and lower earning for publishers.

Check this ad

AdBlock Plus To Not Block All Ads

and this.

AdBlock Plus To Not Block All Ads

If these ads are shown on programming site then you're not helping publisher by clicking on these ads. These are unrelated and low cpc ads.

JavaJones:
You wouldn't put up with a word processing application that only saved some documents, not saving the ones that the developer finds objectionable.

You wouldn't put up with a media player that refuses to play your favorite mp3's because the developer hates your taste in music.
-app103 (December 13, 2011, 01:19 PM)
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Many people seem just fine with the default save formats of both MS Office and OpenOffice, both of which are *optional*. And many media players don't play or associate with all media formats by default. These don't seem that much different to me. That's the critical thing here, as far as I understand, it's going to be the default to not block some ads, but it will still be *able* to block all ads if desired. It's a preference, just like changing your default save format for MS Office or enabling loading of more media formats in your media player.

It's a change in functionality, which I think is causing the majority of the uproar, but imagine if it had been like this since the beginning. People would still love AdBlock, they would just know they have to configure it right to block everything. Heck that's *already* the case as it won't block all ads by default (through omission rather than design, thus far). This just makes it explicit and intended, but again still leaves the out. I don't think it's a great move, but it's hardly deplorable or unjustifiable in my view.

- Oshyan

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