Until the advent of adblockers, it was a de facto condition. Technically, I think it still is, in the same way that television ads are. You’re required to view a thing with commercials in it. What you can do on your own prerogative is remove those ads - by switching channels, getting up to walk away, or in this case, installing an ad blocker. You aren’t opting into ads, you’re opting out of them.
One key difference, I might add, is that in traditional TV advertising, there have never been metrics on how many people actually see the ads. It’s incalculable. They can come a lot closer to calculating the views of online ads, though - it’s definitely not perfect, and they don’t know if you took in any information, etc - but it’s much, much closer to accurate - and those impressions (and clicks) are what drive ad revenue. If I walk away from my TV set, I don’t deprive The Coolest TV Show 2 of revenue. Technically, by ad blocking, I may be depriving The Coolest Web Site 5 of a tiny fraction of their revenue. I know that’s not the point you’re making but I feel compelled to say it, because when people compare the two, in a legitimate way, then people reading it often equate them as the same thing - and they’re not the same thing.
Your point makes perfect sense. As Internet users, creators, developers, we are all aware of the sort of social contract implied by ads. Clearly the ads are there to make the owners money and, in theory, support the creation of the content that you are consuming. Clearly if you disable them, you are harming that process. But no one has said that you can’t remove them. The site owner will have to enforce that.
I hate those. Or the gimmicky news sites that want you to read a paragraph at a time, then click next, only the next button is not the first next button (ad) and the story drags on for 10 pages. I often will just google the subject and find another article to read when I run into those.
I think (I hope) that everyone is just misunderstanding each other there. The actual term “public domain” refers to material that is publicly available, without copyright, to be used and reprinted and modified at will with no issues. That term does not apply to content you put online, just because you put it online.
What people are saying (I think) is that once you put it online, it’s “out there” - now people are going to take your well crafted content and poach it, alter it, re-post it (illegally or not), download it and share with friends, etc. To some degree you have to accept that. Even billion dollar businesses in the media and the like have to accept it. The question there, I guess, is how easy you allow it to be for people to take stuff. But that’s another issue.[quote=“Noppy, post:31, topic:216931, full:true”]
i guess if we remove the security/tracking element then the question is do i have the right to pick and choose what i want to see in my browser or should i be forced to accept any advert that the site owner chooses to put on a website. Given that any information being put on a website is in the public domain on the ‘free’ and open internet, surely i can choose what i want. If it is locked behind a paywall fair enough.
However i do see the security/tracking element as being quite important and is?/will be one of the reasons more and more people ad block. I linked to a recent story about major trusted sites such as the bbc who allowed ransomeware to be propagated from their adverts. The more virus’s are spread from ads the more i am likely to block them.
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I do disagree there. You’re on someone else’s website, they can show whatever they want on it - we certainly can’t dictate that. We can simply choose to leave (the old “vote with your dollars” mentality, only it’s with your… views? sales? whatever?). If you go to the site, you’re absolutely forced to accept whatever they offer - unless you choose to block them. But we have no say in what is on the page, period, we can only choose whether to [try] to block parts of it and stay on the page.
The tracking stuff is interesting, but usually has nothing to do with the site owner, as far as ads go. “Personalized” ads are a controversy, that as I was saying, needs to go in another thread, as it has little to do in my opinion with block/don’t block ads. Those are different things. I am not sure I have a solid opinion on the pros and cons of personalized ads, yet. Privacy vs relevant content and all…
And for what it’s worth, I’ve never gotten a virus/malware (to my knowledge) from an ad. I don’t click on ads, unless I can be reasonably sure they’re reputable AND interest me.
keeping things neat.