On 04/20/2018 06:40 PM, Joseph Frazier wrote:
> Personally, I > consider ad-blocking a form of theft,
priceless. You might have not noticed but people are supposed to own their computers. So the actual theft is done by the ad publishers who are criminally accessing hardware they do not own. That's especially blatant in the case of the tons of javashit tracking malware they run on the computers of their victims.
Sure, it's their computer, but they chose to visit a site which is not theirs, One that was created and maintained by somebody else. It costs to create and host sites, if there is no means for monetization then the likely macro repercussion is less sites or more pay-sites. Perhaps someday on some sites you may choose: 1. micro-crypto payments. 2. give me ads. 3. allow my browser to mini-mine crypto for the site owner. 4. by donation ie wikipedia.... There is no free lunch, the attitude that people should get something for nothing in my opinion is a cancer to society.
This argument strikes me as a steaming pile of shit, metaphorically speaking, because the world it depicts presents as a world of pure imagination. In the material world, ad blocking is available to a minority among technology literate people (already a minority) who choose to take control of their presence on the networks. These same people most often have very high sales resistance, and the ability to "search the world over" for whatever products or deals they require. I can not imagine how an evidence supported model would show significant revenue losses to advertisers, due to the use of ad blocking tools. Maybe some of the most abusive scum in the industry would have a legit gripe about losing money, because "nice netizens" don't go in the neighborhoods where they operate, and "bastard operators" who do go there don't tolerate saturation ad bombing. An atypical niche market, hard to defend while maintaining a gleaming facade of Moral Purity. Failure to block unsolicited executable code inbound from third party websites presents as a fundamental network security failure: A thoroughly unnecessary exposure "inside the firewall", to executable code and arbitrary data files from a class of historically hostile actors. People who fail at basic digital hygiene keep botnets and other major criminal activities on the networks alive and growing. Do you want a Digital Pearl Harbor? Because that's how you get a Digital Pearl Harbor. Failure to use basic network security measures like ad and script control tools - and worse, calling their users "thieves" - presents as gross social irresponsibility: Go ahead and heroically sacrifice your privacy, identity and worldly goods at the altar of your Corporate overlords: But please stop trying to expose the rest of us to DDOS attacks and other Nasty Business via the rooted, botnet infested computers of people who swallow that sad little Morality Play about how the Bad Evil Blockers ruin the Internet for everyone.