What I wish could be done (and maybe it can–I never really checked) is to selectively block ads. I don’t mind static ads that just appear and mind their own business. I don’t like animated ads, popup or popunder ads (which still sometimes get past NoScript, at least on my machine), those horrible things that skate all over the page and don’t display their “Close” button until several seconds later…basically annoying ads. Just show me the damn ad on the page. If you want to animate it, give me the option to click something to see the animated version (which I might even do if it’s a product I’m interested in). Otherwise, leave me the hell alone and act like a polite ad, and I won’t block you. Deal?
Oh, how I wish.
My local newspaper (San Jose Mercury News) has gotten so annoying with its “innovative” (read: annoying as hell) ad formats that I’ve almost given up even looking at it anymore.
Even if you block the ads on the page, maybe you’ll send the page to someone else or post it on your social media. Those other people who view the page may end up viewing the ads.
The problem I have with internet ads is that they are so intrusive. If they were static pictures, I wouldn’t mind. But instead they have audio, movement, take over the whole screen, pop under, etc. Also, sometimes they can be vectors for installing viruses on your system. If they went back to just being simple images, fewer people would use ad blockers.
Not that it matters, but I’m not sure that’s true. Adblock hides my own, site-hosted ads on my website (maybe it’s just picking up on a substring of the URL). ETA: I just checked this and it’s a URL based rule, but it’s in EasyList.
I agree - as both consumer and producer of web content. If I really believed my content granted me an inviolable right to income, I should be explicitly charging for it. Ads are not guaranteed to be seen, or to pay, and we should not expect them to.
Blocking ads on websites is not morally very different to skipping the ads on a PVR-recorded TV show - or, for that matter, leaving the room to make a cup of tea during the ad break in a real time broadcast.
I saw on one site that played videos, if it detected ad blocker it would make you sit through a 30 second countdown so skipping the ad didn’t really save you anything.
You know what? Fuck 'em. My old computer was basically trashed by malware and I don’t really don’t care to take the risk of infecting my new one. It happened after visiting ONE website. ONE. Screw that, I care more about my property than some douchebags making a few cents.
My view is that you should NEVER browse the web without an ad blocker, and if that’s somehow “lying” or “immoral”, so be it. If you want to risk your computer, that’s your business. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I’ll concede the detail, but it’s still from a source outside the main site, making it easy to detect and add to filter lists. Nearly all ad detection is looking for content pulled from some other source, which is very rarely used in legitimate content management. (I’m sure there are cases where complex integrative sites do, but there are other hallmarks of third-party, unrelated content… ads.)
Nope, it’s ads on my site, served entirely from the site itself (they are free ad spaces that I offer to charities - I produce and host the ad banners and link code within my own content) - adblock was just just blocking it because the banner images were in a folder structure named /gfx/ads.
It’s a subfolder that only contains ad images, but other actual subfolders alongside it (e.g. /gfx/thumbs) contain normal site content.
With AdBlock you can right click an image and choose to block it. I suppose you could start with zero subscriptions in your blocking list and just add to it as things annoy you.
I actually use the ability to select things to block as a value-added feature on some sites and forums where people have obnoxious avatars, post annoying images, etc.
They still do that ? I haven’t seen the all-dancing kinds for five years. Admittedly I use linux, but that’s only minor as a defense against website displays — although great in stopping gifts from such sites.
I have AdBlock Plus, AdvertBan, NoScript and Ghostery. I don’t mind a few adverts — few being the operative word, as the modern world since the mid-nineteenth century is saturated with non-stop advertising — and for sites I trust I do selectively disable defenses. AdBlock Plus and AdvertBan can both be instantly stopped for selected sites; NoScript and Ghostery both have Whitelists one may add sites to.
My primary purpose is to save bandwidth ( although this becomes less needed as internet speed improves, and unlimited is standard ) and more important to stop unneeded processes running on my machine. If adverts were less vulgar I could ignore their display.
And of course there is the fact that I am rarely going to click on an ad, and it is almost impossible that an advert would induce me to purchase anything…
The CBS web site won’t let me watch a silly interview (probably a few minutes long) because it detects that I have ad blocking software on. So, someone figured out how to block it. I tried accessing a video link just about an hour ago and there seemed to be no way around it.
I did that (well, something like that - not ‘nudes’) and it worked - they are not filtered any more. It will be interesting to see if, in time, the new path for the images turns up again in the filter list.
Honestly, I wouldn’t use an ad-blocker if ads weren’t the largest attack vector for malware on the internet. I would love to support some dinky little webcomics that I read by viewing their ads, but I am not going to risk my computer’s safety.
Another alternative to using an adblocker is to modify your hosts file so you block access to the most common ad-sites. When some site has asked me to turn off adblock I do it, but still see no ads (most of the time).
Your computer would be just as full of malware if you downloaded the ads.
And I didn’t bring the lying problem for your ethics. I brought them up to explain why hiding adblockers are not more popular. There’s a lack of legitimacy to them that is not present in actually blocking that ads. It’s hard enough for adblockers to not get pummeled by the ad brokers who hate them. Giving them a way to detect their use helps them not be sued into nonexistence.
I noticed the other day at the web cam at Port Everglades refuses to stream video if my ad blocker is active. So apparently they are doing exactly this.
