Coming from the other irony thread , is this an example of irony :P ?
Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
51–60 of 85 posts
Re: Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Plus if Adblock is actually successful and the online advertising industry collapses, then they will be putting themselves out of business." Even worse. Some of these companies (not adblock) are asking protection money from big advertisers to be whitelisted. Mafia style.
[Citation needed.] Maybe this is well-known, but my google-fu only turned up this news about Adblock Plus. Are you sure Adblock does it as well? When I used adblock as the search criteria, I got a bunch of hits on it. But when I did adblock -plus, I got nothing primary that could pin this activity to AdBlock.
Sorry.. No, Adblock does not do this. It is purely donation based which is a good thing. I was a bit off topic.
Re: Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
So? Perhaps they would also like to block the ads at the server side, and save themselves the bill? But more seriously, I don't care about their bills. They're delivering HTML over an open network connection - what I do with that HTML is entirely up to me. If they don't like that there's nothing they can do about it.
Greetings, > I don't care about their bills [sarcasm] How farsighted. Oh how very farsighted. [sarcasm off] So you really do not care about their service being shut down, because it could not pay for itself? I mean, people working there to produce content, hardware to run the service, bandwidth, and so on...
Why should the end user care and worry about a site's ability to sustain its revenue through advertisements? Users who are invested in a site are the kind of users that will do things that make that site more valuable, whether its community interaction or paying for the service.
Re: Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
#54I don't understand how ad-blocking is even legal. It's like stealing - stealing content for free, IMHO there's no difference between stealing MP3s and news or any other content. There's some kind of user agreement between websites and its users - "you can use our site for free, but you have to watch the ads". Adblock violates this agreement. The people responsible for this should be in prison, they're thieves. And I'…
> It's like stealing - stealing content for free
Blocking ads has deprived nobody of their property unless you believe that a site is owed the revenue from ad impressions from its visitors (it's not). This is the same line of thinking of the MPAA with regard to how it approaches licensing.
Re: Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
#55I don't understand how ad-blocking is even legal. It's like stealing - stealing content for free, IMHO there's no difference between stealing MP3s and news or any other content. There's some kind of user agreement between websites and its users - "you can use our site for free, but you have to watch the ads". Adblock violates this agreement. The people responsible for this should be in prison, they're thieves. And I'…
I run a site that makes its money from ads, and I personally have no problem with people blocking them. I figure the people blocking them are less likely to click anyways, so I'm not too concerned. Obviously it would be a problem if everyone blocked ads, but I think that is pretty far off.
Example: I only bother to block them on my main computer, but don't on my phone, desktop, etc. Your average Joe is unlikely to start doing so soon.
Re: Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
#56This makes a perfect sense actually. They want as much people as possible to use the extension so that more advertisers are forced to pay to adblock itself to allow the ads through. The ethics on the other hand on such a moves are questionable, since it makes ordinary advertising either obsolete or makes adblock the bottleneck of it's effectiveness.
> They want as much people as possible to use the extension so that more advertisers are forced to pay to adblock itself to allow the ads through.
Is there any evidence of this happening?
Re: Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
#57I don't understand how ad-blocking is even legal. It's like stealing - stealing content for free, IMHO there's no difference between stealing MP3s and news or any other content. There's some kind of user agreement between websites and its users - "you can use our site for free, but you have to watch the ads". Adblock violates this agreement. The people responsible for this should be in prison, they're thieves. And I'…
It is like you installed software to mute your TV each time the commercials start.
Re: Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
#58I don't understand how ad-blocking is even legal. It's like stealing - stealing content for free, IMHO there's no difference between stealing MP3s and news or any other content. There's some kind of user agreement between websites and its users - "you can use our site for free, but you have to watch the ads". Adblock violates this agreement. The people responsible for this should be in prison, they're thieves. And I'…
I have a few questions for you: What if there is a more advanced Google-glass which has enough juice to detect real-life ads and ability to remove them from our display? If I read a magazine with it, would it be stealing? What if I just cut the ads before bringing the newspaper to my grandma, because she finds them distracting or just throw away the bundled magazine full of discount coupons and ads? What about tv recorders which automatically skip ads? When I take a coffee break instead of watching the ads, would I still be breaking the law? Can I put a paper on my display, where the ads on my favorite website appear? Should I just avoid those web-sites with ads when I'm using a text-only browser?
Re: Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
#59This makes a perfect sense actually. They want as much people as possible to use the extension so that more advertisers are forced to pay to adblock itself to allow the ads through. The ethics on the other hand on such a moves are questionable, since it makes ordinary advertising either obsolete or makes adblock the bottleneck of it's effectiveness.
Ethics? Ad blocking is facilitation of content stealing. Not one inch better than, say, a torrent site where the vast majority of torrents are copyrighted material.
Unlicencesd copyrighted material. Most free software and free music/movies are copyrighted, but they are licensed for distribution.
Re: Adblock buying ads to advertise Adblock
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
So? Perhaps they would also like to block the ads at the server side, and save themselves the bill? But more seriously, I don't care about their bills. They're delivering HTML over an open network connection - what I do with that HTML is entirely up to me. If they don't like that there's nothing they can do about it.
Greetings, > I don't care about their bills [sarcasm] How farsighted. Oh how very farsighted. [sarcasm off] So you really do not care about their service being shut down, because it could not pay for itself? I mean, people working there to produce content, hardware to run the service, bandwidth, and so on...
The business model of websites supported by advertising is roughly as follows: I send you a bunch of data, and I hope that you parse, interpret, execute, display that data in a particular way. Some of that will be useful to you (interesting stuff) and some of that will be useful to me (ad impressions).
Apparently, many people are not comfortable with that kind of exchange. However, people being people, they still want to see the interesting stuff. So what do they do, they install this (free!) ad blocker that gets rid of all the things that are not immediately useful to them. Unethical? Possibly. But not illegal, and not even widely frowned upon.
So at this point, as a businessperson, I must ask myself whether my business model is still viable. If not, I must change it. That's what it means to be an entrepreneur: find ways to turn labour into money. Under Western democracies, I have that right, subject to laws and regulations. What I do not have is the right to having my particular business model be forever profitable.
This is a concept that the music, movie and game industries refused to wrap their head around. Their model was (and largely still is) "I give you these plastic things with bits on them and you give me money". This was acceptable to consumers as long as the plastic was required in order to be able to distribute bits. When this ceased to be the case, the business model started to fail. Rather than move to a different model (which, I realise, I make sound much easier than it is), they held onto the failing one, introducing complicated and fail-prone systems to prevent people from separating the bits from the plastic, in the process alienating their customers by making it harder and hard to actually use their products.
So, no, I don't feel bad when your business fails because of ad blocking. Being a selfish jerk, I'm upset you no longer send me interesting stuff. Being a compassionate human being, I'm sad a bunch of people lose their source of income. But this is the free market. If your business fails, you did something wrong. Someone else will come along and do it right.