Do you use Adblock?

I guess I can't really comment on that. I've never installed any kind of adblocking software and I can count on one hand the number of times i've dealt with the kind of ads you're talking about in the last few years. Maybe it's a matter of me not visiting websites outright unless I trust them.

I guess I can't really comment on that. I've never installed any kind of adblocking software and I can count on one hand the number of times i've dealt with the kind of ads you're talking about in the last few years. Maybe it's a matter of me not visiting websites outright unless I trust them.

I only turn it on if I'm playing a playlist on youtube or a stream on twitch that I have to refresh from time to time due to slow internet.

@christoffer said:

The only logical solution for Giantbomb is gratuitous product placement

I don't think I've ever seen a man look so defeated,

No, but I was just shown an ad on a site informing me of a way to stockpile 10,000 bullets for just pennies on the dollar, so I'm heavily considering it

@patman99: You dont understand why people feel like subverting the system? if I have the option to either pay money or install adblock for free, ofcourse I'm going to install adblock. I'll choose the option that gives me the end result - without consequence no less, which is why I'm not stealing a Ferrari right now instead of driving the Camry. Thank god my conscience doesnt bother me as much as yours - otherwise I'd have to whip myself for torrenting bluray rips every night.

I can't bring myself to use it. Some ads might annoy me, but adblock takes away the livelihood of people who make video content for a living. With the amount of people who use adblock, streamers and youtube guys could at least double their paychecks every month if adblock didn't exist. I think it's incredibly selfish that most of the internet cant stand a commercial or two, so they decide to remove the money making ability of people on the internet. I know that there are sites that use shady ass ads that really REALLY suck. It just annoys me how many people use this as justification to block them all. It makes me really sad to see how high the last option on the poll is, considering blocking ads on GB takes away from what the site can do. If GB had 35% - 40% more ad revenue? That is fucking huge. It's you assholes that can't handle an ad or two that makes it hard for this site to make money.

Adblock is like condoms but for the internet

Yes, and I also use Ghostery, HTTPS Everywhere, and NoScript. It's not just about ads for me, but for security.

What the hell do you search online?

@somnus: So very true!

I don't have cable, and most of the shows I watch are on CityTV in Toronto. While they broadcast over the air, I live in a basement and basically don't get anything off the antenna if the sky isn't clear. They have those shows available to watch on their website in HD, and insert ads where they'd normally play when aired on television. Commercials suck, but if that's what it takes to watch my show, I'm okay with it. Unfortunately, after the ads play, the video player usually doesn't come back to the show. It's a parade of the same one ad 4 times, then a black screen that's sometimes accompanied by the show's audio. Refreshing the page restarts the episode, and you can't skip forward without viewing the ads at the beginning of the episode, and the commercial break you were trying to skip by skipping ahead. Usually, you'll encounter the same problem again. I suspected there might be a problem with the video file on their end the first time this happened, but when it happened on every video for weeks, I decided to try AdBlock, and the episode plays properly without commercials.

I installed AdBlock on the computer I use for internet TV and games so I can actually use that website to watch television. I wouldn't use AdBlock at all if CityTV got their shit together, and that computer isn't for web browsing otherwise. I'm gonna try again this fall when TV starts up again, but I doubt they bothered.

When/where did Jeff say this?

Nothing that should bring that to me. Usually my ads seem pretty generic. I get a lot of the "make $ from home" and "this secret trick to earning money/losing weight"

Most of my searches are about video games, pro wrestling and stuff related to my accounting assignments. Nothing about being paranoid that the US government is coming to take my guns away so I should I should be stockpiling ammo and should also know the secret formula for calculating the exact number of bullets I need to protect my family.

When I refreshed that page, it became and ad for Ford employee pricing

Block everything, whitelist the ones that provide tasteful and safe advertising.

This is the reality of an internet plagued with spyware and a lack of professional ethics. Sometimes, ads get hijacked without the knowledge of the site hosting them, or the company providing them.

I installed No-Script some years ago and I never looked back.

But most websites (GiantBomb included) choose what ads are displayed on the site, removing the most egregious. Somebody brought up the Arrested Development page-opening ad earlier; the second a topic was made bringing it up, Jeff came in and said it was being removed. Yes, most people don't like seeing ads, but as it stands that's the only way a website can support itself financially while still offering completely free content.

Oh, I am sorry but was this thing you call "the Internet" designed to be some kind of capitalistic venture? I was under impression that core idea of it was *gasp* free flow of the information.

People might be interested about Firefox add-on called Collusion. It shows how sites track and share tracked data. With GB ads, you might find that cookies from these share information with some shady partners.

Little bit on the tinfoil hat territory, but still a one more reason why you should block ads.

It's those damn cookies.

I block ads.

Advertisers are always getting all up in my shit and they don't even have the courtesy to ask.

They should fuck off and die in a fire.

That AdBlock crowdfunding campaign just feels really gross to me. "An internet without ads" sounds great in theory, but that also kind of sounds like an internet without free premium content. A lot of people are out there making great content to entertain or inform an audience free of charge, and ads make it possible for them to make a living. The end of ads on the internet is the beginning of more paywalls, more ads hidden as "content," and probably more affiliate bullshit (subscribe to these three free trials in order to access your content).

I just honestly don't get the people who act like its their right to see no ads ever. Yeah, sites can overdo it, and ads can be intrusive and annoying. If ads get to the point where they ruin the experience of a site enough, just stop going to that site. But some sites and some advertisers get it right. If you freak out because there's a banner ad placed out of the way on the site... well, I just don't get it then.

Jeff's given the Internet permission to use AdBlock: http://blog.jeffgerstmann.net/post/59419932820/give-it-to-me-straight-jeff-if-i-use-ad-block-am-i-a

The following is for all the people who said that they wouldn use adblock but their conscience doesn't allow them.

Get a fucking grip of your self you deluded mother fucker. Do you have a smart phone? They're made by people living in a factory arcology in China where people literally throw themselves off the roof because the place is such a grey shit hole and they are only a couple of steps from slave labour. The same goes for pretty much all of your laptops and most desktops. Those things get pumped out of places like Foxconn in their millions. Bet you don't fucking care about that. What about your clothes? Do you give a shit that most of them are made in sweat shops in Vietnam and India ? I've been to a couple of those places and they're fucking horrible. But that's not bothering you. No what bothers you is that people who live in a really nice part of the world are fucking moaning about not making enough money playing video games for fucking a living.

Just to be clear, I'm not some activist or anything. I don't give a fuck about the people who make my iphone or my clothes or worry about where my petrol comes from or anything along those. Because you can't worry about those things, that's the way the world works. But if I'm not letting my conscience bother me about slave labour, there isn't a hope in fucking hell I'm going to worry about using adblock.

...say it don't spray it....

No, because I want to support the websites I visit, most of them are free and their only revenue is from ads.
Also, the adblock list of excluded sites were confusing..
:P

I don't care. Do what you want, it’s not your job to help some dying business model limp on so that advertisers and the people that sell ads don’t have to learn new skills and find new ways to evolve their product.

-Jeff Gerstmann

i block everything and i will always do

@corvak: @sharkethic: @darkvare: @spraynardtatum:

You know what's going to happen if most people start being dicks and install adblock? We'll get an internet without ads? Are you stupid?

This is what's going to happen:

Product placement in some form in every video, podcast and article. Gosh, I sure am looking forward to that ad free internet where each week, the bombcast stops for a few minutes to thank the sponsors.

You think all the free content you get every day runs on rainbows, pixie dust and unicorn farts? Sites will get money out of you in a way you can't block or they will die trying. In both cases you lose.

@pyrodactyl said:

If I keep their grubby paws outta my stew pot I'll chalk "die trying" up as a win.

@pyrodactyl: How about you calm the fuck down, stop calling people stupid for not agreeing with you, and maybe weigh both sides of the argument.

As I mentioned in my previous comment (page 2), I don't believe that it's the consumers responsibility to keep companies business models profitable. I don't see what's so unreasonable about that, and yelling unfounded shit at me about "pixie dust and unicorn farts" is not exactly swaying me.

There's no reason anything on the internet should have ads. Fuck em all. Let them burn.

Same goes for cable. I pay for DISH and use the Hopper feature which automatically cuts out the ads while watching recorded prime time TV. Can only hope they bring the feature to all of the cable channels as well.

I don't think you understand. In that bright future adblock is preaching, you either watch the video/listen to the podcast/read the article and get product placement shoved down your throat or you pay for an online membership or you get off the internet.

No more freeloading, no more easily tuned out banner ads, no more 5 second skip button. Advertising, inside the content you want to enjoy. Mixed in. Unavoidable.

Wow, you're all monsters. Enjoy!

I much more inclined to support that dying business model than to be stuck with the shit they will need to come up with to keep the content I like to watch going. The current ad model is tame, unobtrusive and easily tuned out from my brain. The trend is going toward ads in the middle of videos and podcasts, unblockable, unavoidable and much more up in your face. The longer we go without those becoming the norm, the happier I'll be.

I don't go to any of these MALWARE AD SITE POP UP MANIA SHOOT THE PIRATE TO WIN AN IPAD sites so I don't see a need for it anymore.

Dude, for someone that really has no idea of what the internet is going to look like in 5 years, you seem to present a shitload of your statements as fact. Stop speaking in certainties, please and thank you.

Also:

No, because I am European and we don't get ads :D most of the time...

I guess, as the creator of this survey, I shouldn't be making my opinions known and invalidate my impartiality or whatever. But it is strange that people seem to working from the assumption that viewing content on privately owned, for-profit websites is something they have a fundamental right to do.

I guess it speaks to how deeply the internet is integrated into our lives that we assume every website should be available on our own terms-- even if it is, in fact, someone else's website. We come to feel ownership of anything we use often. Psychology, huh.

I guess it's like Jeff said about games piracy-- you have to make accessing the thing legitimately easier than accessing it in the alternative manner. Which unfortunately, in a website's case, probably means the ads burrow deeper to survive, perhaps routed through the site's own internal servers to make them indistinguishable from the site's own content. (Or something.)

I can hear Vinny complaining about having to re-encode a NAVY ad to store it on their personal servers already.

It does sound pretty funny when he's saying it, though.

@pyrodactyl said:

@corvak: @sharkethic: @darkvare: @spraynardtatum:

You know what's going to happen if most people start being dicks and install adblock? We'll get an internet without ads? Are you stupid?

This is what's going to happen:

Product placement in some form in every video, podcast and article. Gosh, I sure am looking forward to that ad free internet where each week, the bombcast stops for a few minutes to thank the sponsors.

You think all the free content you get every day runs on rainbows, pixie dust and unicorn farts? Sites will get money out of you in a way you can't block or they will die trying. In both cases you lose.

I could have sworn it was run on unicorn farts. do you have a link for your claim?

@pyrodactyl said:

@corvak: @sharkethic: @darkvare: @spraynardtatum:

You know what's going to happen if most people start being dicks and install adblock? We'll get an internet without ads? Are you stupid?

This is what's going to happen:

Product placement in some form in every video, podcast and article. Gosh, I sure am looking forward to that ad free internet where each week, the bombcast stops for a few minutes to thank the sponsors.

You think all the free content you get every day runs on rainbows, pixie dust and unicorn farts? Sites will get money out of you in a way you can't block or they will die trying. In both cases you lose.

I could have sworn it was run on unicorn farts. do you have a link for your claim?

@sharkethic: Several podcasts I'm listening to have started taking a moment to thank their sponsors. A number of youtube channels I visit have product placement for netflix and hulu or thank their sponsor in the video in addition to their ad before the video. Jeff is talking about having product placement on the bombcast in the very near future. This is the way things are going. The more people try to block ads, the more they will infiltrate the content itself until you can't get rid of them.

This is the most important point Jeff made regarding the adblock controversy (although people seem to forget that part when quoting his contribution to the debate). He's in meeting rooms every day talking to marketers and corporate types. He knows which way the wind is blowing.

Seriously, I'm not sure what your point is. You don't have to support a dying business model but are you sure you want to find out what those marketers will come up with to keep the boat afloat if everyone stop supporting banner ads and video ads? I sure don't trust them with coming up with anything better than what we have now. Unless we're talking about better revenue generation that is.

If sites are hosting ads on their own servers to circumvent AdBlock, thats fine.

It gets around the issue of security that causes me to use AdBlock in the first place, and sites who use tasteless or annoying ads - I will stop visiting.

I don't use it because I see it as money moving around like, blood circulating around, keeping the content alive. If there's a site that I just don't want to support, I stop visiting it. It's not that hard. It's usually shitty video players, and a continuous cycle of ads that force me into using alternatives. Like, using Crunchyroll instead of Hulu or whatever.

I just want to put it out there that it doesn't matter what way advertisers try to advertise to me because I'm going to dislike it regardless.

I hate advertisers. period. It doesn't matter if it's product placement within the content, banner ads, door to door salesmen (they're the best because it's actual humanz), the ones you click on, the ones you scroll over, the ones that track my data, the ones that leave me alone, the ones that use eye tracking and emotion detection (WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO XBOX!?!?!?), the ones in magazines, the ones in the newspaper, the ones from big corporations, the ones from small businesses (though these are preferred because they're usually bad and funny), the ones that are loud, the ones that are quiet, and on and on and on..... I won't watch them with a fox. I won't watch them in a box.

I will always and forever hate ads. It doesn't matter the form they come in. If it gets to the point where I can't avoid them in any way than I'm dipping out.

I pay my anual $50 to Giant Bomb, the only site I care remotely enough to pay for. I use AdBlock for every single other site out there. If you think that makes me a dick, you're free to come and suck me, i.e. a dick.

I'm not gonna be scapegoated via adblock for something that is inevitable. I'm sure I'll be able to cope when we hit a "watch an ad" or "pay for it" system (I've been conditioning myself with F2Ps for years). Who knows, maybe it'll sharpen my tastes if I had less access to random internet garbage.

CRAAAWLING IN MY SKIIIN

THESE WOUUUNDS THEY WIIILLL NOT HEEEAAAL