Website Mass-Bans Users Who Mention AdBlock 660
An anonymous reader writes to recommend TechDirt's take on the dustup over at the Escapist, which recently tried on banning users from their forums for the mere mention of AdBlock. In the thread in which the trouble started, a user complained that an ad for Time Warner Cable was slowing down his computer. Users who responded to the poster by suggesting "get Firefox and AdBlock" found themselves banned from the forums. The banned parties didn't even need to admit they used AdBlock, they simply had to recommend it as a solution to a troublesome ad. The forum's recently amended posting guidelines do indeed confirm that the folks at the Escapist believe that giving browsing preference advice is a "non forgivable" offense. After a lot of user protest, the forum unbanned the transgressors but heaped on the guilt.
Find a new site (Score:5, Insightful)
When Microsoft decided that they wanted to limit the number of features in the OS based on how much I was willing to pay them, I changed operating systems.
When the Sea Shepherds decided that terrorism was a valid way of combating whaling, I stopped contributing to them.
When Hamas decided that war with Israel would broaden their support, I decided to throw my support elsewhere.
When Obama decided that the only way out of this depression was massive spending programs, I affiliated myself with a different party.
If a site is not going to treat you with respect and dignity, then take your business elsewhere. A site that measures you in "eyeballs" rather than "contributors" is not something you should be associated with in any way.
Re:Find a new site (Score:5, Insightful)
If a site is not going to treat you with respect and dignity, then take your business elsewhere. A site that measures you in "eyeballs" rather than "contributors" is not something you should be associated with in any way.
Exactly. In fact, Slashdot is one of few sites that are Doing It Right. I was so impressed when I saw the "Disable Advertising" option that I immediately added *.slashdot.org to my AdBlock whitelist (although I should have done it earlier given the amount of time I spend here).
Re:Find a new site (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea if its related or purely coincidental, but ever since I've had the 'Disable Ads' box checked, I've never received mod-points, despite receiving them somewhat regularly up till then.
Re:Find a new site (Score:5, Insightful)
Coincidental, I've got them right now and seem to get them at least every other week. Probably has to do more with how your posts are rated and how often you metamoderate than anything else.
Re:Find a new site (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Find a new site (Score:5, Informative)
I'm getting so many packs of 15s that I would be rich if it was possible to sell them. "Disable Ads" checked since around 2007.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Find a new site (Score:5, Funny)
Heh, just like pretending to take away a cats food when it refuses to eat :)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not to mention they've got an entire FAQ on who gets points if anyone bothered to read the documentation, all sorts of things like visiting often but not too often, reading the comment section or articles, it's wheels within wheels!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I ad-block, have the checkbox clicked and still get modpoints about 2-4 times a month for writing about as many posts. In fact, I have some right now.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a lot of reasons for not getting mod points, one is if you are a prolific poster (like I am) you won't get mod points, even with excellent karma (like I have). You're still eligible for and invited to metamoderate, however.
I'd rather argue or agree than moderate.
Re:Find a new site (Score:4, Interesting)
After reading your post I thought, yes maybe I should disable adblock for slashdot. So I did. And I got a flash ad. And I enabled adblock again.
Good Luck with That (Score:3, Interesting)
When Obama decided that the only way out of this depression was massive spending programs, I affiliated myself with a different party.
I hope it wasn't the Republicans, since the bailout that was required to prevent a depression directly resulting from years of irresponsible lack of oversight was initiated by George W. Bush and merely completed by Obama.
I also hope it wasn't the Libertarians, since it was their lassaiz-faire philosophy of deregulation and strict adherence to the Chicago School of Economics w
Thank you for playing (Score:3, Insightful)
FAIL: I would have thought, as a slashdotter, you were more interested in the facts. Do some homework: The banks were bullied into lowering their lending standards by left-wing idealists intent on equal opportunities at any cost.
Ah, no, that would be your collassal FAIL for swallowing right-wing talking points and fiction hook, line, and sinker and calling them "facts".
This crisis had nothing to do with the tiny minority of sub-prime loans disbursed under federal fair lending requirements. These banks were
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
passive aggressive behavior is only part of the dynamic.. it is reactionary. something like adblock is proactive, which forces the other side to sit up and take notice. since when does visiting some site qualify as a business relationship by default? ...arrogant 'webmaster' mentality taken to extremes I guess..
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You should change your name in BadAnalogIESGuy .... four analogies mostly unrelated to the problem at hand ... I salute you sir ... nomen est omen.
What happen??? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, where the hell did my previous reply about Digg go?!!
Same place as mention of AllParadox did on Groklaw (Score:2, Interesting)
The same place as any person inquiring about AllParadox goes on Groklaw. (He left the site due to their moderation policies which are both sneakily implemented and poorly known. See his post to the SCOX forums, for example.)
From rules list (Score:2, Insightful)
Starting a thread: Posting is an art; be proud of your work.
This tells you everything you need to know about these forums.
You could stick post-it notes over my screen ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
TV is passive entertainment. Site forums aren't, so your comparison isn't exactly accurate.
Besides having rules on directing continuity people to keep viewers in place for the ads though, TV companies use localisation, CGI to alter advert content, higher sound volume during the adbreaks, adverts during the programmes themselves (not counting the product placement) and they crop the programmes' lengths to suit rigid advertisement times.
And none of that even mentions the lengths they'll go to censor writers,
Troublesome ads (Score:5, Insightful)
A site I frequent ran some ads for a while that gave me grief. When it spawned a discussion thread they got rather pissy about it.
but, here's a point...
If your Ads fuck-up the user experience that bad then they can't read your site you dimwits. If they can't read it they will go away and not come back. Would you rather have that? -FIX- the Ads promptly and there won't be a problem.
It's not a threat to say "If you don't fix it, I will leave". It's a fact, and it's not entirely by choice.
Re:Troublesome ads (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem I see with ads is editorial control.
With real magazines ads, editors have some kind of control of the ad after they receive it. For example, they can decide if they accept an ad with a full page giant penis in it selling v14gr4.
However, with web ads, the editors have no control over it. The advertizer has complete control of how the ad looks. And even though at the time of "contracting" the ad the editors may like the types of ad, maybe after a month the ad will get changed to something really annoying.
From the original forum thread, the problem was that someone's computer was slowing to a halt because some random flash ad. That sort of thing is really annoying.
I even have seen similar kind of trouble in pages of open source projects. In one of those pages, the guys used some ad service and got some kind of virus or XSS attack in one of the ads... even though the ad company was supposed to be good!
Re:Troublesome ads (Score:5, Informative)
So use a better ad company. Project Wonderful [projectwonderful.com] lets you moderate ads if you choose, or whitelist by advertiser, or just allow a free-for-all. And they don't allow arbitrary scripting, so no XSS or browser attacks.
Re:Troublesome ads (Score:4, Insightful)
A benefit of 3rd-party ad servers (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem I see with ads is editorial control.
With real magazines ads, editors have some kind of control of the ad after they receive it. For example, they can decide if they accept an ad with a full page giant penis in it selling v14gr4.
However, with web ads, the editors have no control over it. The advertizer has complete control of how the ad looks. And even though at the time of "contracting" the ad the editors may like the types of ad, maybe after a month the ad will get changed to something really annoying.
3rd-party ad servers do have one benefit: There is no direct relationship between content makers and product makers. With magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, and direct online ad sales, there is a temptation to do secret editorial-for-content deals with their product-maker customers.
Advertising is most suitable for things like classifieds and job ads. But interruptions with agendas are a pretty silly way to learn about new products. It would be better if we paid people to help us select products [rbate.com].
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So I got
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
maybe after a month the ad will get changed to something really annoying.
My former employer had an interesting policy on "wrong ads". You purchase a time slot for displaying your ad in a box on the page. The ad must conform to strict guidelines. If you violate the guidelines, the ad gets removed immediately and without notice. You still have the time slot and can post another ad, or the same, fixed - but the clock is ticking, and the ads there being helluva expensive, you'd better pay a close attention to t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most medium to large websites will have some clause in their contracts with media buyers/ad networks where they reserve the right to pull any ad, at any time, for any reason. The problem is often the traffic departments (more so for large websites, but this applies to smaller ones via the ad network they use).
Traffic departments are basically the office peons that cut and paste the HTML code from, say Doub
Re:Troublesome ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
All internet users should use some Flash blocker that allows the user to accept specific flash content, period.
FireFox and Chrome have plugins called FlashBlock, Safari's is called ClickToFlash. IE8 provides this functionality from the Flash player add-on in Manage Add-ons under Tools, just select More informations and click Remove all sites. All these will let you reenable either individual Flash applets or whole sites when you browse those pages.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the software equivalent of hooking up your battery directly to a dummy load so it drains very quickly without anything really showing on the screen.
Do an Ars (Score:5, Insightful)
Do what Arstechnica discovered after they tried blocking adblock users from seeing articles; actually *ask* your users to whitelist your site in adblock (or other ad blockers) with a promise that if the adverts on the site cause issues with users machines that they will work to resolve them and/or remove those adverts from rotation.
So far, every site that I use regularly and trust (for appropriate values of trust) that have asked me to whitelist them have had their request granted. I'm happy to help out the sites with their revenue on the condition that the adverts on said site do not impact my browsing experience; pop-ups, pop-unders, sound, fullscreens, "intellitext" or mid-paragraph ads are an instant nono, as are any that impact page loading due to shoddy design and overloaded ad servers, but I'm willing to put up with most other ads if I'm asked to in order to support the site.
Re:Do an Ars (Score:5, Insightful)
My take: Text ads, fine. Basic graphic ads, OK.
Ads that pop up crap when moving over text, Flash crap which wiggles around the screen like someone projectile vomited over my shoulder and onto my monitor, and pages which take more than 30 seconds to low because some adfarm just doesn't have the pipes to deal with the traffic, or even the annoying "punch the monkey" crap no.
Google learned this lesson back when every other search provider were doing banner ads, and this is one reason why Google has leapfrogged ahead of the pack and stayed ahead so long. Text ads are fine. Ads which require 5 megabyte .swf files are just plain unacceptable.
Re:Do an Ars (Score:5, Informative)
Google learned this lesson back when every other search provider were doing banner ads, and this is one reason why Google has leapfrogged ahead of the pack and stayed ahead so long. Text ads are fine. Ads which require 5 megabyte .swf files are just plain unacceptable.
The sweet irony here, of course, is that DoubleClick are one of the worst offenders and are actually owned by Google, now.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, this is also making Google's ads worse. Since a year or two ago, by default AdSense publishers have a box checked that allows Google to sell the space to "third-party networks" as well, and they use DoubleClick for that a lot. You can uncheck the box and require only ads that go via actual Google AdSense, but I suspect few publishers do.
Re:Do an Ars (Score:5, Informative)
[...]They've been redirected into oblivion in my /etc/hosts since then.
Yes, because simply not visiting the site would be silly.
From http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars [arstechnica.com]
[...]We made the mistake of assuming that everyone who is blocking ads at Ars is doing so with malice. As it turns out, only a few people are, and many (most?) indicated you are happy to help out. That's what led to this hopefully informative post.
Our experiment is over, and we're glad we did it because it led to us learning that we needed to communicate our point of view every once in a while. Sure, some people told us we deserved to die in a fire. But that's the Internet![...]
What dicks!
Re:Do an Ars (Score:5, Informative)
They were hostile to NoScript users too, who didn't even notice Ars had done anything until the forum postings started.
Once some NoScript users mentioned that, and then loudly said they'd never, under any circumstances, enable scripting for doubleclick, etc, Ars got nasty toward them too.
I don't understand the fanboy mindset (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Stockholm syndrome?
Re:I don't understand the fanboy mindset (Score:4, Funny)
Apple syndrome? (runs)
= belonging to a group (Score:3, Insightful)
It's juvenile behaviour of people who who have not grown up enough (mentally) to be something on their own but get their self esteem by belonging to a group.
To give some examples more relevant to slashdot where I've seen/experienced this: gnu.misc.discuss springs to mind where everything Stallman says or does is perfect a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's juvenile behaviour of people who who have not grown up enough (mentally) to be something on their own but get their self esteem by belonging to a group.
I'd say you are half-right. Its not just about being a member of a group, but being part of the hierarchy. The feeling is that as long as they show 'proper deference' to their 'betters' they will receive similar deference from their 'lessers' - and if there are no 'lessers' now surely there will be once they move up the hierarchy. I think 'proto-fascist' is a pretty accurate knee-jerk description for that mindset.
Cartman summed it all up in one short sentence, "Respect my authoritae!"
Re: = belonging to a group (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
(For what it's worth, I never found their banner ads to be terribly intrusive, so I never AdBlocked them. That's changing today.)
Rules of Ad Blocking (Score:5, Funny)
The first rule of ad blocking is you DON'T talk about ad blocking!
Blizzard did the same thing (Score:5, Informative)
Not too long ago, around a year ago, Blizzard added banner ads to the official World of Warcarft game forums.
People strongly objected on the basis that nobody can post to those forums unless they already pay Blizzard money for an account, so why should paying customers be subjected to the advertisements? They clearly didn't need advertising revenue to pay the bills, it was just a crass money-grab. This spawned many posts on how to block the ads. The result? All of the ad-blocking discussion threads deleted, and all of their creators banned from the forums. Some people complained, but they soon found out that talking about deleted threads is also grounds for a ban.
It sucks, but what can you do? The only way they would have any incentive to change is if people actually quit the game in protest over the decision, which isn't particularly likely. They perhaps spent some of their good will by way of their actions, but there's no real immediate or obvious negative repercussions.
I am torn as well. I understand the need for advertisements to subsidize content on the web, but I also see it as an issue when a company abuses the ubiquity of ads to slip them in as a money-grab when they clearly aren't dependent on advertising for their revenue. Moreover, I really feel like it should be obvious at this point that banner ads are stupid. They fact that people go to such lengths to remove them should indicate how people feel about them. They're really no different then spam; except spam is free, so it can be profitable with abysmal response rates. Does anyone actually buy anything as result of banner ads? Sure people click them all the time, but how often is it done on purpose? The damn things are just in the way. I'm constantly accidentally tapping on ads on my iPhone, but I sure as hell have never bought anything as a result.
Annoying flash ads, banner ads, and javascript-fueled nightmare ads are not selling anything. Anyone notice those are all things Google does not use? I think they know a thing or two about the business of internet ads. They've got 25 billion dollars in the bank that says internet advertising works better when its not obtrusive and obnoxious.
Re:Blizzard did the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I was fine not blocking ads until 2 trends started.
First, the obnoxiously loud ads. A little sound is one thing, but an ear splitting 'Congratulation!' bellowing out unexpectedly is quite unacceptable.
Second, malware spreading ads. I thought they were a myth at first, until I was tapped by one (spreading one of those annoying fake antivirus trojan things no less.) And these do turn up on otherwise reputable sites, so anyone trying to pull out the 'watch where you browse' or 'lay off the (porn/warez/music/movies) can sit and spin. The first infection I encountered on a system I used came from a tech support forum of all places, while running Firefox, with anti-virus and anti-malware application resident and up to date, and all applicable security patches to all involved software in place. 0-day exploits are a pain that way.
And even the best 'we will remove it if it causes trouble' policy is a failure. By that point, the damage is already done, I've had to spend time cleaning (or just plain rebuilding) a system to be certain a bit of malware is gone.
Nope, until sites start guaranteeing all their ads free of such issues (and a few others might be nice, like bugged, eta your CPU ads) the ads get blocked. My browsing safety > their ad revenue.
Re:Blizzard did the same thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Yours is the second comment I've seen on this article with a stipulation similar to "until they start guaranteeing their ads free of such issues". I'm surprised. What guarantee could they possibly make that would be both convincing and immutable? I say "immutable" because any guarantee they offer now, technical or otherwise, could easily be discarded without notice by future management.
It is wise to consider the ad companies untrusted, and decide when the risk is justified by the potential benefit. Right now, that's looking something like zero percent of cases for the foreseeable future. It only took one malware-infested PDF ad to convince me.
Re:Blizzard did the same thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Moreover, I really feel like it should be obvious at this point that banner ads are stupid. They fact that people go to such lengths to remove them should indicate how people feel about them. They're really no different then spam; except spam is free, so it can be profitable with abysmal response rates. Does anyone actually buy anything as result of banner ads? Sure people click them all the time, but how often is it done on purpose? The damn things are just in the way. I'm constantly accidentally tapping on ads on my iPhone, but I sure as hell have never bought anything as a result.
The thing is that even though click-through rates are bullshit the billboard space is not. If you're a semi-smart consumer you at least check a couple sites and a couple brands before picking one, but WHICH stores and WHICH brands? Oh, the ones you've been fed with the last year and are the first to pop into your mind. There's a diminishing rate of return on checking every store, every model (if such a thing even is possible) as long as you get a good deal on a good model from a reputable seller.
People think they know exactly what you want and isn't affected by ads which is only true for the things that are important to them but ignores everything that's not so important to them. I might know all the high-end CPU models but buy lots of foodstuffs and clothes and furniture and whatnot where it's not like I've gone through any exhaustive search or made a huge in-depth analysis. Nice shirt, best possible shirt purchase? No idea, but I'll buy it anyway. A fashion freak might know every deal on shirts but not have a clue of computers, this is where marketing matters.
Finally, and this is an important point about advertising - ignorance is bliss. Unless they're aware that they overpaid, they don't really care. People just think "Cool, this 600$ computer is amazing, it's so fast and nice and 600$ wasn't much..." even if they could have gotten it for 400$. It's only if they know that they care about the 200$ they "lost", not because it was poor value but because it was a poor deal. If they take the deal then stop looking because they're no longer in the market for any they are happy.
Personally, I hate shopping. If you throw a decent offer in my way I might just to be done shopping. I think these ads are trying to be much the same way, they're not just the window you glance past but the clothes rack in your way. A little obnoxious yes but at the same time something you're not able to dismiss so easily, which might lead you to stop and ahhhhhhh looked at this long enough, I'll buy something now and be done with it. There's definitely business in that in the real world, I don't think the online world is that different.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Way to go - 'criminialise' your users! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently (FTA), this is in the site's T&Cs
Do not confess, teach, admit to, or promote ad-blocking software that will allow users to block the ads of this site.
Great. Using ad/flash-blocking software is a crime now? Whatever happened to reasonable discussion?
Instead of just banning the users, could the mods not have simply pointed out that the site needed the ad revenue to survive, and also acted to remove the offensive ads?
Who are the customers of a site such as this; the users, or the advertisers?
Re:Way to go - 'criminialise' your users! (Score:4, Funny)
Problem solved.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know much about the site in question, but having scanned the first page of the thread two things are obvious - it's widely known that the moderators don't tolerate discussion of ad blocking (and the first reply was a very reasonable "you should speak to the mods about this not raise it in the forum" kind of reply), and the site offers two models, a paid subscription service that disables all ads and a free, ad-supported service, so it seems it's already clear to the core users why the ads are there,
Internet used to be a home (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a good reason a home is called a home. As opposed to a marketplace. People like to actually live at home, not at the marketplace (shopaholics excluded.)
Internet used to be more of a home. Now it is become more of a marketplace. Everywhere you turn, there is some shmuck pitching and pushing his stuff onto you, and when you refuse he goes verbal.
The whole thing is rooted in overpopulation again. Too many people need to survive, and they colonize the Internet space, with their smallminded schemes.
tongue in cheek? (Score:3, Insightful)
"As we've mentioned previously in great detail, if you've got ads on your website that are annoying your users, that is your fault -- not your users' fault. "
he writes this with a massive animated HP advert that takes up 1/4 of the column width down the side
advertisers can suck it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the same website that bans you if they think you've commented too quickly on a video. If they didn't have ZP, I'd never go there.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
opt-in instead of opt-out... (Score:4, Interesting)
There is one line in the post that intrigued me:
I ad-block sites that I've never been to before. If they look like a cool site or something that I'd use in the future, I turn off the ad-blocker on that site for any future visits. It's my way of saying "hmm, good job" to the site.
I realized then that most websites offer opt-out advertising. That is, you have to see it unless you pay, use an ad-blocking program, or contribute something that the owners deem worthy of removing adds (like that tempting "no ads for good karma" thing I keep seeing on /.).
I agree with what this community manager said and I would dare ask the logical follow-up question: why don't websites ask you to opt-in to their advertising? The idea would be simple - you visit the site and after X page views, or some other evil metric, you are taken to a page that says: hey, you can help us out with $$$, view ads, or just be a leech. I firmly believe that you will find that the majority of people who become engaged with the content will select either the $$$ or advertising paths. Right then and there your advertising space is worth more than all of the traditional "opt-out" websites.
So, do any advertising market providers allow for this?
Electronic Arts does the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Escapist is not alone. EA bans anyone who talks about the Better Business Bureau and removes their posts. I recently, after 40 days (irony?) got a free copy of Mass Effect 2 Collector's Edition after turning them in to the BBB (something I've never done before) for their shitty Bad Company 2 launch and the fact that several weeks after launch, and after I had talked a friend in to buying the game for the whole 15 minutes I had been able to play it, it was still broken and took HOURS to connect to a server to the point where sane people walked away and wanted their money back.
I had purchased from STEAM so they told me I was fucked because they wouldn't talk to me since it had been a digital download (that they had to distribute to Valve, got their cut of the money for, and I paid full retail for; something else I rarely do). I appealed to the BBB, I guess because they didn't want the 3 year mark on their record they finally ponied up a game after refusing to refund anything, going through 3 tiers of tech support idiots and going full circle when they tried to "troubleshoot" my connection after already offering an alternate title.
I think people who are dicked on releases like this (in this case, the game was fine, it was their horrible MP authentication and Punk Buster server fiascos) should absolutely be compensated by the company at fault so they have a deterrent from pulling that shit again.
I should say, I haven't even opened the box for ME:2, I may well sell it, and I haven't touched BF:BC2 since either. Fuck EA, the Escapist, and all those like them. This will probably be marked OT but it seemed relevant enough, and happened recently enough (I just got the replacement game yesterday, after literally 40 days of going back and forth between EA and the BBB mediator every couple days) that I thought I'd share my story of woe.
just block "document.write" ... (Score:5, Informative)
If we are not allowed to talk about AdBlock plus, then lets talk about "document.write".
Most (probably all) ads are created with "document.write", so simply block "document.write". And enable "document.write" for the few sites that you really enjoy.
Add the following to "prefs.js" (seamonkey, firefox, ...):
user_pref("capability.policy.default.HTMLDocument.write", "noAccess");
... ");
user_pref("capability.policy.trusted.HTMLDocument.write", "sameOrigin");
user_pref("capability.policy.trusted.sites", "http://localhost http://forums.mozillazine.org/ [mozillazine.org]
user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "trusted");
See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/ConfigPolicy.html [mozilla.org] for more details ...
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that they have reversed the bans since then, it's not that simple, now is it? What is the value of a site without visitors?
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the value of a site without visitors?
The site owners banned these people because they don't see any value in a site without revenue.
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
AdBlock is of course not ideal from a website's owners point of view.
A proper admin would have solved the problem, not made a new one.
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
It only takes one bad ad to trigger the use of adblocking technology and then the users won't stop use it.
This is yet another case of ad companies creating problems for users that decreases the usability of a site.
On the other hand - I couldn't see much value over at the Escapist site anyway, at least nothing that did attract me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a strong supporter of adblocking software on Firefox or anything else. I do not consent to the level of advertising that seems to be acceptable to most people. I believe that spending 10% of your life being assaulted by advertising is not a good way to live. Further I believe that some advertising is directly causing harm to people by constantly playing on their fears and promoting irrational greed. The balance is wrong and we should have the means to tip it back to a sane level.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You do. Don't use the internet, or at least the advertisement-supported sites.
You see, if enough people take up a site's bandwidth without generating ad impressions, the ad companies pay less for their ad-space, and each visitor, on average, produces less income for the site. The site's gotta keep itself afloat (or in some cases, profitable), so it has to try harder to increase the number of ad impressions, or increase the valu
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Funny)
I stopped at stared at the ads without realising they were ads.
They were so alien to me I couldn't comprehend why there was a picture of a fat woman on the screen which was ttoally irrelevant to what I was reading
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Me too! Whenever I see a web ad my initial reaction is no longer annoyance, but rather surprise. "What is this?" I think to myself. "Lo, this foreign thing is so incongruous! Here I am on a web page about one topic, and there is this strange part of the page about a totally unrelated topic!" Then half a second later my brain realizes what the thing is, and then the annoyance sets in.
Also, pages with ads have an odd "shape". I'm not used to seeing big tall column-shape images next to whatever I'm reading, bu
"They pay the bills, so STFU" -- on the other hand (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the worst of this lot I've seen on The Pirate Bay, so maybe I should try AdBlock for that site. Normally I don't mind ads that behave themselves and don't try to "get in your face". But Flash ads have gone too far afield in this regard.
Let's face it. If you have something to advertise that I am interested in buying, a simple JPeg ad will get my attention. If I am not interested, the most flashy of Flash ads will have no hope in hell of changing my mind, and become annoying if they start tying up my computer resources trying to get my attention for their crappy products.
The owners of Escapist and other sites should recognize this basic fact and spend more time policing the ads and less time harassing their users, who can go elsewhere in a heartbeat. I thought this was obvious, but some never learn.
And when your browser chews up 400 megabytes or worse due to these bloaty ads, that's a problem. Users shouldn't have to throw out their old computers and buy the latest and the greatest just so they aren't slowed to a crawl -- or even crash -- because of silly bloaty ads. Go figure. So the STFU works both ways.
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
The Original Complaint was about a particular ad slowing down the whole site.
No, the original complaint was about a particular ad slowing down the user's browser, including any other sites they might have had open. In fact, at least one user found it crashed their browser repeatedly, which is a non-forgivable offense in the modern era of tabbed browsing.
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The beatings will continue until Morale improves...
Good call... Not. {roll_eyes}
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the value of a site without visitors?
The site owners banned these people because they don't see any value in a site without revenue.
And they un-banned them because they realized, belatedly, that without visitors there will be zero revenue. Why is that so hard to grasp? When users feel compelled to take extra steps (AdBlock), just to wade through the crap to get to what they value (content) you're doing it wrong.
Sucks to be them. (Score:4, Insightful)
Shh. If you listen carefully, you can hear me playing sad music on the world's smallest violin
I know that most of you weren't even born yet, but there was a time when the internet had no advertising. And it did just fine.
"Monetizing your assets" is marketing bullshit-speak for "fleecing stupid people and annoying the rest". In fact, I own several websites right now that contain no advertising and get traffic. Any business that performs a service that's worth more than a pile of post-horse-oats can afford enough hardware and bandwidth to support thousands of users for less than they spend on getting the mats by the front door cleaned. And anybody who wants a personal site can do the same for less than the cost of a "value meal" at McDonalds.
And as bizarre as this seems, I could even post original content and have user interaction just like The Escapist and still charge nothing.
Not only do I recommend ad-block to my friends, I install ad-blocking proxy servers for businesses, because nowhere in the world is wasted time, money and bandwidth more apparent than in businesses that actually measure expenses and productivity. Employee wants to spend a little while looking for a new recipe for hummus? Great! Employee gets distracted and spends a half our down the rabbit hole with punch-the-monkey ads, not so great.
They can advertise all they want, but nobody is going to tell me that I have to:
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:4, Funny)
Fine, I will. Luckily there are sites like Slashdot which do fine without ads.
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Funny)
Ananonymousreaderwritestorecommend TechDirt'stakeonthedustupoverattheEscapist, whichrecentlytriedonbanningusersfromtheirforums forthemerementionofAdBlock. Inthethreadinwhichthetroublestarted, ausercomplainedthat anadforTimeWarnerCablewasslowingdownhiscomputer. Userswhorespondedtothe posterbysuggesting"getFirefoxandAdBlock"foundthemselvesbannedfromtheforums. Thebannedparties didn'tevenneedtoadmittheyusedAdBlock,theysimplyhadtorecommenditasasolutiontoatroublesomead. Theforum'srecentlyamended postingguidelinesdoindeed confirmthatthefolksat theEscapistbelievethatgiving browsingpreferenceadviceisa"nonforgivable"offense. Afteralotofuserprotest, theforumunbannedthe transgressorsbutheapedontheguilt. AND THEN THEY ALL HAD LEMON MERANGE PIES.
For the truly anti-punctuation (Score:3, Funny)
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought you need to enable Javascript to get them in the first place.
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On the other hand, Slashdot has a right to grouse about it on their own site if they want! Everyone's got rights all around. ;-)
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
I pay for my bandwidth I'll choose what I download, including page elements.
The Internet was so much better before corporations/bussiness was significantly interested. Befor anyone says the ads pay for content there was plenty of content in the early days of the internet, much of it was high quality because the people who placed it there wanted to, were interested or passionate . Not because they were getting paid.
I turned off my TV in 1996, internet entropy has caught up with television. It is becoming prepackaged "safe for idiots" and less free
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
I pay for my pipe. I own my computers, and have root/admin rights and responsibilities for them. It is my duty to myself and others on the Internet to lock down security threats I know about. As an IT person, if I do not take steps to stop an avenue of infection, then I'm committing gross negligence at my job.
Some ad-rotators from third parties are one of the top sources of browser exploits. A lot of unscrupulous ad services place control of the ad to anyone who comes with dollars. This means they can go for a browser add-on exploit, or many other things. And since the ad is random, neither the ad company, nor the malware company making ads gets blamed. Everyone wins except for the website, and the user.
Even first tier ad companies have gotten bitten by this in the past: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/13/doubleclick_distributes_malware/ [theregister.co.uk]
So until I can get some assurance from ad companies that they are not allowing people to serve up malware, I will take steps to protect security, and that means Adblock, NoScript, and on company networks, I'm going to be using Privoxy or some commercial ad-busting transparent proxy to make sure that this avenue of intrusion is closed.
And if some website bans people for wanting to protect their own security, fuck them. It is as simple as that. Most users if banned will just create another user from a different IP. If the new user creation process gets too stiff, that web forum will just fade into irrelevance, unless it caters to just a small, inbred crowd.
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Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:4, Informative)
After many years[1] there finally seems to be some signs of progress being made on features that will help websites make things safer for their users:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/01/HTML-5-Sandbox-IFrame [infoq.com]
http://people.mozilla.org/~bsterne/content-security-policy/ [mozilla.org]
[1] I actually tried to get people to do something about a similar problem 8 years ago:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2002May/0021.html [w3.org]
http://www.mail-archive.com/mozilla-security@mozilla.org/msg01448.html [mail-archive.com]
For years the browser and W3 have been focusing on adding "gas pedals", and their idea of brakes was "just make sure none of the hundreds of gas pedals we created are pressed", which is a bit trickier in the real world.
If they had added working "brake pedals" back then, stuff like the MySpace worm might not have happened. And ads and other 3rd party content might be more easily secured.
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He's back! [theonion.com]
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There is a difference; the cost on entry is pretty low for a website while astronomical for a TV station(not including public access). Don't visit the horrific sites that bother you with ads. Find a nice little corner of the internet and hang out where people are willing to pay their money for your entertainment and mooch off of them until they can't afford to do it anymore, then find someone else who is willing to pay for your entertainment, and repeat.
Just don
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't found a huge pushback against relatively unobtrusive ads that are reasonably tasteful, especially if the site owner explains why they were introduced, and the site has a community that actually knows and believes the site owner. A lot of the backlash is over the total opposite extreme of no ads: ads plastered on the page in 10-15 locations and even breaking the flow of articles, some animated in Flash (which also grabs your mouse pointer and breaks kb navigation), some of which play sounds at you, and some displaying gross teeth and spiders and fat bellies and god knows what else.
If you have a community that cares about the site, you might try gently introducing some optional payment options also. Even trivial things like: support the site with a $10 donation and you get a little icon next to your name in the forums as recognition.
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus now they are interested, they show through their own actions, they have no moral limit to how far they will go. This action by them is blatantly effectively punishing Thought Crimes. I guess talking about AdBlock is against what the business wants, which is effectively compliant consumers who don't learn how to block advert bombardment.
I guess they have never heard of the Barbra Streisand effect.
But it does makes me wonder what kind of world we are heading into where corporations gain ever greater control of the major web sites when they show they are so willing to behave like this.
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:4, Interesting)
Plus now they are interested, they show through their own actions, they have no moral limit to how far they will go. This action by them is blatantly effectively punishing Thought Crimes. I guess talking about AdBlock is against what the business wants, which is effectively compliant consumers who don't learn how to block advert bombardment.
Talk of Adblock is a signal that the user is empowering themselves. If you want to make money with computers, the last thing you want is the user to become empowered, you need them reliant on you, the man in the middle providing a service.
Long term successful products on computers do not empower users, they make users dependent. Now, for an example, this'll go 2 ways: Windows (insightful please), MacOS (flamebait from the fanboys). But the point is valid. You don't learn about computers using those platforms, you learn about those platforms. We've all seen Windows users who brain shuts down in front of OSX, or Mac users who bitch about any other platform - it is because they are familiar with their platform, but not the ideas behind what they are doing.
Facecrook, Google et al. use the same idea: be the middle man, make the user come to you as the first thing when they need to contact someone, or want some information, etc..
Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite a contrast there, eh?
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once the html is in my browser it will be parsed how I see fit on MY machine.
Here's a thought, just to play devil's advocate. Is it legal to modify the content being transmitted to my own machine? I don't have copyright over it, so do I only have permission to transfer it for viewing? The browser has to render it of course, so there's wiggle room there, but what about Privoxy?
In the same vein, does the ISP have the right to modify, for example replacing ads with their own? In fact, I wonder if any ISP's are surreptitiously doing just that right now. Not necessarily different ads, j
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Let me respond in kind. Your site is not a unique snowflake, ban a person and they can go somewhere else. Anywhere else, and they'll probably drag more people with them out of 'kinship'.
The users make the site, the site doesn't make the users.