Comments on: Ad Blockers Considered Harmful

By: Ravey

Ravey — Sat, 24 May 2008 13:39:37 +0000

Opera is pretty handy with pop-ups, you can choose how it handles them which is nice. If ad-blockers exist that block the actual ads on pages, that’s definately wrong but pop-ups are less of an issue and if they have to exist, it’s better if they pop-up under your website in a seperate tab and perhaps close automatically after a short while.

It’s also important for ads to be relevant and non-disruptive…Which used to be much larger issue than it is now.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:45:02 +0000

Link removed, since you’re spamming for your own site. I’m aware of the history of “considered harmful” but your crusade doesn’t seem especially meaningful.

By: Anonymu

Anonymu — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:48:47 +0000

See link. “Considered harmful” considered harmful. I just wish we’d all stop using this “considered harmful” crap. This is a good example of “‘considered harmful’ considered harmful.” “Ad blockers considered harmful” is not a meaningful title, and it produces the wrong impression. Read the “‘Considered Harmful’ Essays Considered Harmful” essay. (No, it’s not mine, not my website, and not related to me in any way.)

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:57:12 +0000

I agree that blocking all ads is harmful. The hosting of my website dosbox.com is payed from advertisement income.
If I don’t get enough money from that anymore. I will probably simply unplug the plug. Making free software or other free products costs resources enough already. I don’t want it to cost money to deliver it to you.

But some people don’t see understand that. To support other sites I don’t have any adblocking software installed. Off course sometimes there is an annoying ad, but that is a small price to pay for the free things you get in return.

Unfortunately people like Arnos only think about their own profit and might lead to the downfall of the free internet as we know it.

By: Arnos

Arnos — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:21:25 +0000

Perhaps I was exaggerating the severity of the bad ads. The ads that annoyed me, I saw at casual, normal, games blog (http://freegamer.blogspot.com/ and http://jayisgames.com/ to be precise), they were advertising some stupid MMORPG, I guess that after seeing no ads for such a long time, I over-reacted.

Btw, when I said one in a thousand I meant 1 in 1000 ads, not sites.

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:11:27 +0000

Lol thanks, I’m more in need of art than anything else!

By: Protected

Protected — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:45:36 +0000

By the way, hi Adam. You may not remember me, but I’m the guy who offered to make a flash Jetpack last year. You said you’d do it yourself, and I said I’d trust you with it ;P I came to this website for news of your progress, and I must admit I was a little surprised to find out that you’re actually working on it. I’m sorry for my lack of faith ^^ I wish you the best of luck, and I’ll be around to lend you a hand if you need any actionscript help. Provided I don’t forget about it

By: Protected

Protected — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:40:26 +0000

Maybe you’d think differently if you were a small publisher, developer or webmaster of a large non-profit website

It’s true about the mature ads, but usually those ads are only displayed by less recommendable websites… A blacklist would solve that, or block ads in advance for those websites before visiting them, or just don’t visit them. Sometimes the publisher isn’t aware that some of his ads have explicit content, so you can contact him and let him know. but as you wrote, it’s very very rare outside less legal or decent websites (0.1% is 1 in 1000).

By: Arnos

Arnos — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:50:05 +0000

With Adblock off, I run into another problem that I didn’t mention, there are a fair number bunch of ads (say 1 in a 1000, that may not sound like a lot but if the food you ate was poisoned .1% of the time then you’d be in trouble) that, if ads had a rating, would be rated M. It’s not possible to sort the ad’s out without looking at them and once you look at them and then it’s too late. Plus ads are just ugly and annoying and take up screen real estate. I’m not willing to look at such junk just so that the webmaster of whatever site I happen to be on can make a few cents.

By: Protected

Protected — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:41:10 +0000

Blacklists for bad ad publishers would solve the problem. Also, it is possible to automatically block ads that send tracking cookies and popup ads without blocking the other ads.

Did you know that you can disable automated downloading of pictures in Firefox, Arnos? If you only want to read text, you should try that feature.