10 years ago
21
Is it ethical to block adverts online?
Blinking, beeping, auto-playing. Popping up, over, under. Tracking, intruding, unsettling. If the internet was a pretty face, advertising would be its wart. Thankfully, if getting "a great six pack in weeks!" isn't your thing, you can simply flick a switch and use an adblocker - software that banishes the sight and hushes the din of irritating advertising all over the web.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk
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My parents have a pretty strict bandwidth limit on their home internet - 12GB a month - If they go over that, they have to pay... I installed adblock on their desktop to help them stay under that limit
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Bandwidth is the largest reason for me as well (followed closely by avoidance of malware). I don't have a monthly cap, but our download speed is pretty low and the advertisements were often the parts of the page that took the most time to download. I actually don't mind advertisements myself, in fact I really like them (definitely a minority opinion) as they've helped me find nice products/services that I later actually purchased/visited (just as an ad is supposed to do), but in the end I can't bother enabling them as the bandwidth and malware risk are too high to make it worth it.
I'm old as dirt and I remember when only one website had ads..Yup..One. That website was Yahoo. Everyone else paid for their websites out of their own pockets by having a real job..Yeah, I know, scary concept,no? The Linux website I'm a mod on still does this. You won't see one ad ever.
It is amazing how the ad mongers stamp their feet and huff and puff over people blocking ads, even as they forget how they brought this on themselves after years and years of being as irritating and obnoxious as humanly possible. I do not buy things from ads I see,in fact,the more you annoy me,the less likely I'll be to buy your stuff. Not to even mention that the chances of my buying an ad from a third party I neither know or trust is less than zero. I'm not here to look at ads and buy stuff I don't want/need just to prop up your archaic business model. I always muted and looked away when tv ads came on and Ad Block allows me to do the same. Ads are irritating,demeaning,insulting and waste my time. Now if you pay me $12,000 a year,I'll look at your ads all you want,otherwise,forget it. At the end of the day,it's my computer,not your computer and I decide what goes on it. So just keep right on acting like self-entitled ninnies, I really don't give a hoot.
"Ad Mongers"? You mean people who want to make some money back for their hard work, which they provide to you for FREE?
It hardly matters if you're actually going to buy it. If you're not viewing ads, the owners of the sites you're browsing are not getting anything back whatsoever. If you are, you're supporting the people who worked to deliver that content to you, for free, may I reiterate.
Just because some people want to lose money for the benefit of the public doesn't mean everyone wants to, or CAN do, for that matter.
"Archaic business model"? What's your alternative? Donations are almost out of the question. Don't rely on people's generosity. The other option is to have to pay to access the content. We don't want that, do we?
Muting and looking away from TV ads is different. The broadcasters are still gaining ad money, whether or not you're actually looking at the television. If you block ads, the content providers get nothing.
"Now if you pay me $12,000 a year,I'll look at your ads all you want,otherwise,forget it." You ARE getting paid! Your "payment" is the content that the providers are giving you, again, for no money out of your pocket.
"At the end of the day,it's my computer,not your computer and I decide what goes on it." Did you write all of these websites yourself? Because I think the creators should have a say in what goes on THEIR pages. Sure, a custom style is okay, but denying them money just so you don't have to see a flashing box is a different matter.
Wholeheartedly agree with your point. People that put a lot of work into creating content deserve to make an income from it. You wouldn't ask a a developer to build you a free house, or a restaurant to make you free food. Content creation, be it a website, an article, a video or whatever it may be takes a lot of time, effort, and lets not forget experience. All of this time spent so you can have something interesting to do on that computer, people feeling too entitled to free content are misguided. Currently advertising is the ONLY business model that works in a predicable manner, and until we find something different, or perhaps better, we should allow ads to be displayed in support for our favourite content creators.
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I usually disable Adblock for websites that aren't as annoying and that provide good content.