The Mozilla Foundation has come out against ad blocking:<p>"Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising)."[1]<p>This is sad. Their slogan used to be "Work for mankind, not for the man". But the Mozilla Foundation is ad-funded. They currently have a deal with Yahoo to make Yahoo Search their preferred search engine. Before that, it was Google. Those deals bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. So they can't afford to bite the hand that feeds them.<p>This places them in conflict with Apple. Apple makes their money selling stuff to end users at a high markup. They can be very anti-advertiser if they choose. Apple could block all ads on their devices and market that as a feature.<p>[1] <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/07/proposed-principles-for-content-blocking/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/07/proposed-principles...</a>
It was inevitable that this would happen. I remember when Opera first added pop-up blocking and plenty of people got mad. This is the same thing: ads are burning energy, bandwidth, and our time.<p>Now that consumers have been subjected to piles of abusive ads, they're just blocking all of the ads regardless of how bad they are.
From a business model perspective, the reader is not the 'customer', but the advertisers. The content is just the bait to get traffic, and then a publisher has to monetize the traffic, most of the time by using ads to divert some of the traffic to an advertiser. So a publisher has to walk a very fine line between not anoying the reader too much but at the same time still have value for the advertiser. No wonder that some publishers go (way) too far and only focus on advertisers and almost forget the reader.<p>Doesn't help that the ads are most of the time outside the control of the publisher, but are controlled by big advertising networks of course.
> <i>Look at New Yorker, for example. The ads are generally interesting and feature great photography.</i><p>Wish Google would introduce some sort of minimum design requirements for their AdSense image ads.<p>I also wish they'd give publishers full control over the appearance of their text ads. Right now, these ads look horrible, and only premium publishers (ie. websites with millions users) are given this sort of control.
I'm fairly sure that if publishers removed popups (ads and subscription forms), ads that move the text while you're reading it, and autoplay video or audio ads, then most people would be happy. As it stands, readers are bombarded with ads that ruin the actual reading experience.
I think we are missing one key thing in this debate. Ads and ad-blocking is just a symptom of the fact that you cannot make money in this industry.<p>The only ones making money on IT are companies who's main thing is not technology, but who can utilize technology to make there business more efficient. A good example is logistic companies who have a business that's been around for ever, but smart algorithms allows them to cut costs and work more effectively. But the money it selves comes from shipping things.
I'll be honest, I hate all ads, regardless of how good they are. I think it's creepy and fills my mind with things I do not want it to be filled with. For me, the entire debate is silly because it's my screen -> my decision what appears. I think it barely matters how good the ads are. I've only seen one single website that did ads right (they were perfectly embedded into a mosaic pattern of site functionality, things like a little tile with the coca cola writing). (EDIT: Okay, news.ycombinator.com also does it well with its inline job ads. See, I didn't even think of it as an ad, that's how nicely it's embedded.) The problem is that people used to use the internet to exchange files and information that was then locally stored on each PC. Now, you go to youtube, listen to a song, and 20 minutes later you download the entire video again if you listen to it (if you closed the tab inbetween). That stuff adds up and of course everyone is reluctant to pay that bill. The solution is going back to a decentralized download-culture like it was in the 90's. Storage space is incredibly cheap. Nobody has to pay that bill of transferring the same things over and over and over again.
In my opinion, a lot of the discussion about ads and ad-blocking leaves a very key factor undiscussed: that, as with US healthcare, the consumer cannot make an informed decision about whether a given piece of content justifies the loading of a given piece of 3rd party code, because the terms of use of that code are undisclosed. The whole notion of "implied consent" seems laughable to me - about as laughable as the idea of going into a car dealership and buying a car sight unseen and for an unknown price that can be redefined by the seller at any point in the future. [Edited for cell phone typos]
This site is an ad and no one is blocking it. Many Instagram feeds are ads. This ad blocking debate is taking a very dated and narrow minded view of what an advertisement is.
Ethical ad blockers should let the web page know that they are blocking ads so that the web page can chose to not display the content, or offer a paid option.
It will avoid a stupid arm race between the two parties, and it's transparent.
Ads will never go away and these ad blockers will soon become worthless if the advertising companies ever think they're a threat. There are so many easy ways to defeat ad blocking. This is why I despise Apple for trying to publicize web ad blocking while letting their ads be displayed in their little gated community. Apple is essentially ruining it for the people that do use ad blockers because we're going to reach a point where the ad blockers are unable to block ads due to the myriad of ways publishers will use to foil them. It's only a matter of time before this happens and I hope Apple is paid back for this move in spades.