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The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

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Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#81

Post by mindslight »

jensen123 wrote: post #56
ufo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin stores every single transaction that ever happens in a public ledger. Not only is it not private but it also will not scale for microtransactions on a massive scale.

> Bitcoin stores every single transaction that ever happens in a public ledger. Ok, I admit I'm not a Bitcoin expert. But if I buy Bitcoin with cash, or mine some myself, is this really a problem?

Yes, because in the best case you're still creating a single pseudononymous profile and one identity-tied transaction will deanonymize the whole thing.

Even without that, enough usage activity means a shadow profile can be inferred that is effectively tracking you, just without a specific name. FINCEN has been developing this type of technology for decades.

And this is magnified when you're talking about essentially penny transactions - unless your cash bitcoin dealer is willing to see you every week for another $2.

"Anonymity" means little in the context of ecash. The property we're really looking for is untraceability, which bitcoin does not have.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#82

Post by JupiterMoon »

DanBC wrote: post #72
InclinedPlane wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're living in a fantasy world. Nearly everyone universally hates spam, and nearly everyone uses a mail system that automatically filters it. They don't sign a pledge, they just use tools that help then avoid spam. They mark spam they get in their inbox to help others avoid it automatically. And they have no compunction about using a site that relies on spam, they merely find it annoying. And as I mentioned there's…

But people the people who created those early spam filters - they all signed the Boulder Pledge. They all agreed that not only would they block spam, but they would also never ever buy a product promoted with spam. > Nor is there a moral obligation to do so. Don't pretend that you have unique moral authority, able to decide the rights and wrongs. If you don't want ads you should boycott ad supported sites - not givin…

I dislike like spam and adverts in roughly equal measure and I've never heard of this Boulder Pledge.

> But people the people who created those early spam filters - they all signed the Boulder Pledge. They all agreed that not only would they block spam, but they would also never ever buy a product promoted with spam.

And people that use spam filters on a daily basis just like the fact that they don't get as much spam anymore. You know like people that use adblockers and appreciate that they don't have as many adverts anymore.

You are comparing apples and cats. If you want to compare apples and apples compare the people that created spam filters with those that created blockers and compare the people that use spam filters with those that use blockers.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#83

Post by BogusIKnow »

Main reason for ad-blockers for me: They try to distract you from reading the text you came for.

While in print ads don't (can't) do this.

Online they open to the whole page after some time, they constantly animate things to draw your attention from the text, some play sound, videos, left, right, above, below and in the text between paragraphs and capturing links.

Main reason probably because they don't really work.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#84

Post by njharman »

If your business model requires changes to reality, then your business model is probably dead. [If you have lobbying power, you can extend your business model for awhile, perhaps indefinitely ala content industry and copyright.]

In other words, adapt your business model to change or die.

It's not up to "reality", us, to change to support your business model. If there is demand for whatever you produce, someone will create a "business model" to supply it. If there is not enough demand to pay for any business model then so be it, we didn't actually need/want your product after all.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#85

Post by analog31 »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #62
hannob wrote: post #22

This is so common for the many anti-adblock texts you see these days - they all avoid to talk about the major issues here. (I say that with the background that a significant part of my income comes from ad-financed news pages.) That is: * Security risk through ads (malvertising, ad networks not supporting https etc.). * Ads killing performance (70% CPU for a flash ad is not uncommon). * Privacy (Ad vendors having mos…

This strikes me as pretty similar to the usual "record labels are evil" defense for pirating music, in that it's a rationalization for something people were going to do anyway. While your points are true ones, they're not the reasons most people are using ad blockers (for instance, I am quite confident that most people have no idea about the security risks involved in simply loading an advertisement).

That's true in a sense for me. I originally installed an ad blocker because I'm annoyed by the ads, and by the bandwidth that they were consuming. I wasn't even aware of the security and privacy issues at first.

When I became aware of those issues, I installed additional blocking software even though I was already not seeing any ads.

In my defense, content blocking has been around since time immoral. The first browser I ever used, some Netscape, had a setting to disable the display of images. I used that setting to speed up my page loads.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#86

Post by snksnk »

This is the Internet, whose users tend to be highly innovative. If your business model is built on serving (good) content with ads and people don't like ads, then you will have a problem. It is a pity for some, but inherent to the Internet.

I have seen many web sites turn from a hobby into a small business funded by ads, who are now feeling the pinch. They either need to find a new way to monetize what they offer, or turn into a hobby project again. (Which often saves a lot of money on horrible UX. Generally after 2007 / the uptake of smartphones a lot of good features were eliminated and sucked into the black hole of UX and dumb simplifications to accommodate the average Internet user. Everything is tailored now for the average user, and the power user is left out.)

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#87

Post by JupiterMoon »

chris_wot wrote: post #78
DanBC wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people the people who created those early spam filters - they all signed the Boulder Pledge. They all agreed that not only would they block spam, but they would also never ever buy a product promoted with spam. > Nor is there a moral obligation to do so. Don't pretend that you have unique moral authority, able to decide the rights and wrongs. If you don't want ads you should boycott ad supported sites - not givin…

Are we talking about spam or ads served over the web? If the latter - they are taking up my bandwidth!

If either reach your local machine then they are both taking up your bandwidth.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#88

Post by fromMars »

BogusIKnow wrote: post #83

Main reason for ad-blockers for me: They try to distract you from reading the text you came for. While in print ads don't (can't) do this. Online they open to the whole page after some time, they constantly animate things to draw your attention from the text, some play sound, videos, left, right, above, below and in the text between paragraphs and capturing links. Main reason probably because they don't really work.

I am also not a fan of annoying ads and maybe I am just a crotchety old guy, but, IMO, using an Ad Blocker and viewing content is theft.

If one is concerned with privacy, there are alternative measures such as cookie blocking options, legislation, etc.

If the ad formats are annoying then the right thing to do is to let the publisher know and work out a way to pay for the content ad-free or just stop using the site.

I also feel the same way about the bit-torrents and downloading copyrighted content. But, maybe I am the only one who feels this way.

Re: The Devastating Effect of Ad-Blockers for Guru3D.com

#90

Post by adminprof »

xorcist wrote: post #40

"Blocking" ads is loaded language, and should be recognized as such. Not viewing ads can be done in a multitude of ways, but it's not like users are patching software to get there. The web was always built to be adaptable to the end user device. The user agent was intended to act as the decision maker how to render the markup. For many years, browsers even respected the default foreground and background colors and fo…

You bring up a terrific point. The ads are simply not loaded. The user is accessing an external server, and it's up to them what to load.
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