My thoughts on Adblock, share yours.....

I figure the internet would be a way worse place if there weren't ads and most everything was crappy amateur content, so I don't use adblock. I think its pretty funny that people get so defensive about comparing the use of adblock to pirating games/music/etc. Its obviously not exactly the same thing, but the thinking is the same. "I have an easy way around paying these people for their hard work, so I'll take it for free." Yes, ads are often annoying, but very few websites that employ professionals could continue to exist without them. That probably goes for this one.

I started using adblock the moment 30 second ads before videos became a thing. Never in a billion years would I stop using it.

I use it and don't whitelist any sites. I really just don't care and it's worth it to me. Yes, I'm fully aware of what I'm doing wrong and that I'm an incredible dickhead.

Same here.

Same here, though I only subscribed for a few months before I realized the premium content didn't mean anything to me.

Same here, though I only subscribed for a few months before I realized the premium content didn't mean anything to me.

Event Hubs has started putting up a big notice of shame that detects you using adblock and tells you you're a horrible person and that you should disable it.

I stopped going to Event Hubs.

@squidc00kie said:

I don't use adblock on Giant Bomb. So let's not try and pull the hypocrite card, shall we?

I use Adblock but whitelist certain sites (Don't have to whitelist GB since I am subscribed for at least 2 more years and don't have to worry about it). In reality, most companies would probably be happy that I block their ads because the more ads I see for something, the less likely I am to use it and I think less of companies that advertise like crazy to make up for a crappy product. I'd much rather sites offer cheap subscriptions like GB and Ars Technica do. I'd way rather support them that way rather than have to put up with ads. I always buy the discount membership in November for GB and it ends up working out to something like $4 a month. That amount is well worth not having to see ads or waste my time with video ads.

As for Youtube, I used to whitelist certain channels but I don't care anymore. It simply isn't worth my time. The ads are so obnoxious now that it isn't worth it. The whole new thing where they have long ads (more than a minute, I've seen up to 5 minutes) with a skip button in hopes that you just don't notice and leave the ad playing is the absolute worst. Not to mention the extreme volume disparity that kept driving me nuts. Many ads were significantly louder than some of the videos. Not to mention most ads override your volume settings (this is the worst on Twitch. Have a stream set at half volume, suddenly an ad starts playing at more than full volume) and are often unmutable (again, on Twitch).

I use Adblock in combination with NoScript and other security/privacy focused extensions. I don't like that the user has become the product on ad-supported sites. I don't want my information sold to advertisers. I don't want to be tracked. I don't want to have to see distracting, obtrusive, and potentially malicious ads. If I truly want to support a website, I make that a conscious decision.

I think he's just pointing at the general attitude to people who use ad block as people who don't feel they should pay for anything that isn't physical and having spoken to a lot of people who use it... A common trend among those who use it is they are the sort of people who use ad block put no value on anything that's digital, like at all, and that they are also the same sort of people to start hate campaigns on businesses and the like after they change direction or provide sub-par servers for their content/service... and I am not exaggerating. And queue the 'but I buy all my games legally' but then you just open yourself to being called a hypocrite by downloading TV,Film,Music & Books as well as webpages/blogs/vlogs

Read most of these pro ad-block posts and tell me they don't sound like a bunch of entitled brats whose mentality is 'RAWWWR Fuck the system big business corporate AMERICA boooooooooooo' whilst not thinking about how BIG BUSINESS is made... it's made up of people like you and me just working for a living. The is a guy saying it's out of line to compare to piracy but that's simply not the case, that's plain ignorance, it may not be legislated but you're consuming content for free and bypassing the income revenue... which is exactly what piracy is.

No not everyone is like that, far from it, a lot of considerate people (such as yourself) would switch adblock off for the sites the regularly use but as you may tell from this thread alone a lot of people don't think like that at all. They think they're being pro-consumer but in reality they're the very same people that have lead to more intrusive ads then ever and are encouraging a system which could potentially lead to sites being locked off unless you have a subscription, heavily sponsored shows which could mean loss of integrity, penalizing those not using adblock by providing more barriers to entry (please wait 30seconds, please complete a survey, etc etc.)

Read threw every single argument FOR adblocker and they all have one theme in common, they're all driven by selfish desires & ultimately I don't think the majority of the users give a shit if the internet changes it's ways as long things dont change in a way that allows them to go on any website for free as they please without ads & I dare people to challenge me on this final sentence & actually mean it... and please show me what else you're doing to change the internet to back it up.

@yesiamaduck: I will agree with most of this post, but there are some points I'd like to bring up.

One, the 'not looking at ads is piracy' argument doesn't entirely hold up when you consider some sites have subscriptions that DON'T do away with ads. So you're directly funding the site and getting your content, which is where that transaction should end. You paid for your content and you got it. But then you're also getting content you don't want in the form of an ad. The 'adblock is piracy' argument only really stands so long as the ads are the means for a person to pay for the content they are receiving, which isn't necessarily true. And even then that depends on what you define as the content in this situation. If the ad itself is the content (you see an ad, they get money, so that would make the ad technically the product in this scenario) then no, you're refusing content, and there's no reason to pay for what you didn't get. If you consider the website the content, then yes, in some right it is piracy.

There have also been some pretty reasonable posts concerning pro-adblock in the thread, if I may be honest. The argument about intrusive advertisements stands in certain circumstances. If I recall correctly, as I'm not sure if this post was in this thread or another similar thread we had here, but someone mentioned how they kept getting those psuedo-porn ads that would have sound to them that would fill their house. I would be super uncomfortable with that, and that would be good reason not to support that kind of advertisement. Other ads can be malicious, and the more paranoid people, for lack of a better word, may not be comfortable with ads that collect personal data. I'm personally okay with the latter because it caters ads to my interests, but others might not be such a fan of advertisers creeping on them. And not to try and sound egotistical bringing up my own as an argument, but there shouldn't be a moral quandary over blocking ad that makes it impossible to view the content. It's like paying for a sandwhich and then never getting your sandwhich.

That said, there are definitely a lot of posts here that read like "I don't like advertisements so fuck the system maaaan," and while I'm sure we'd all like a system without them, I don't think just blocking every ad ever is the way to go about it.

The internet before ads actually wasn't all that bad. Different, more of a wild west, less pro, but certainly not crappy. Well, you know, chat and forums actually worked back then .. before every newhire tried to re-invent them in javascript.

Fuck yes I use it, I hate (not a word I use lightly) advertisements in general and only have select youtube channels and news websites white-listed to support them. Even then, I never click on the ads and skip/ignore all video ads.

The best part about ad-block is that it makes porn sites less annoying to navigate.