81–85 of 85 posts
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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.
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> I saw the same thing, but that's not exactly the same thing as seeing ads, they're not (AFAIK) only showing AdBlock ads... they're informing you of something they are implementing in a hidden way. I think it counts as an advertisement, and I'm not complaining, only observing. I just thought there was more than a touch of irony in AdBlock showing an ad within the AdBlock app. > We're not living under a totally facis…
I don't think the irony is missed on anyone, no doubt the AdBlock guys them themselves... and the ability to watch or not watch ads is not the point I was making. The point is we have a choice of whether to use or not use, either Adblock, AdBlock plus, something else or nothing at all. But more so, the general state of the web and the big brother on everything. It's a slippery slope :)
I couldn't agree more. I was posting on Usenet before there was a Web, so I've seen the entire sequence of events. Rather depressing overall. But it could be worse -- we could be hunted down and killed for expressing dissent, for protesting, for supporting unpopular causes. When I say this, I'm thinking of this man:
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/narendra-dabholkar-shot-d...
This man, this doctor, was an activist against unscientific quackery. He became too well-known and too effective, so his enemies hired a hit squad. And this was in India, a country and people that revere democracy and free speech.
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"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.
A free service putting itself out of business... Can someone explain to me how that works?
This 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?
I 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 st…