Stop, Thief! Why Using an Ad Blocker Is Stealing

[razor512]

I was wondering if one of the editors on this site will be willing to do this. live stream yourself working on your PC, then for at least a month, download and install every single application displayed in a tomshardware ad (including the registry cleaners and driver update utilities), then keep those for a month. Live stream so the community can make sure you are keeping them installed and are not taking any steps to alter their default behavior.

When the applications run, install or whatever they recommend (including the drivers that the update utility will recommend.
For the updater application advertised on their site, my most recent computer repair job was fixing an issue with a network adapter not working, in addition to the hard drive (IDE) being stuck in PIO mode, and no audio, thanks to a driver update application.

As a company allowing ads on your site, you must never allow an ad for any product that you would not use yourself.

 

[MagicPants]

So I read the article and felt guilty, I figured I'd give ads a chance on Tom's because I like the content and trust the site. First ad I got "informed" me something was wrong with my computer and suggested I install their "official" drivers (Not that they said what the problem was, or what the "drivers" were for). I turned adblock back on immediately. Seems like what you're selling "advertisers" is a very small chance to infect an idiot's computer, steal their PII, and ruin their life.

 

[djayjp]

Seriously, Tom's, those horrendous inline, highlighted (pseudo legitimate looking html links) in article text are the spawn of the devil and need to die ASAP. I absolutely do use an web elements blocker for this purpose (among blocking tracking cookies).

 

[Commentator101]

Not only is this article full of bull* but it actually makes me think that you are paid to write low quality "sensation" stories like oh so many tabloids out there. Here is the bottom line that I believe only you will be offended by: either stop making ads intrusive and prone to malware/adware/spyware or find another way to put food on your kid's plate. Otherwise you are only adding to a problem that should not have existed in the first place.

If you "need" popup ads on your website, be prepared to either lose customers who are offended by them (losing revenue in the process) or be ready to pay, as you say, adblock makers to whitelist your site's ads )and "losing" money this way.

I, as a customer, care only about CONTENT and how I can consume it unhindered, whatever else you have do do to get that content to me and bid for my time and attention, is your problem.

 

[ingtar33]

This is the advertisers and by extension the website's own fault. Many Ads are poorly disguised adware/virus installers. Even running a heavy top end antivirus suite isn't enough to protect you from all sources of intrusion in the form of adware/virus/trojans. For safe web surfing it's pretty much required to use ad blocking software.

The author of this op-ed can't possibly be surfing the net without an adblock software (on a pc anyway). if he was he would know what he's haranguing us for is simple common sense. You use ad blockers to keep your pc clean, speed up your web browsing, and avoid all the redirects and popups that make web browsing very unpleasant. If you're having trouble feeding your kids maybe you should be doing something else with your life. The more crap ads websites include without review the more adblocking software will come into vogue.

btw: i no longer use adblock because it sells advertising "openings", i use uBlock because it doesn't. it also works better.

 

[Guest]

The image of the article explains exactly why I use ad-block. Getting full screen ad's blasted onto my screen which block what I am trying to look at! Lets list annoying advertiser 'habits':

Flashing ads,
Auto play ads,
Auto sound ads,
'Warning' messages (often with flashing elements),
Fake download buttons,
Hidden scripts.

I am sure there are many more, but those are the main reasons I block ads.

Out of interest, do the websites get money just for displaying ads? Or does the user need to click on them? If it is the latter then they have never got money from me anyway as I never click on them, too much risk of it going to a dodgy website, which you can't check the URL first as it goes through an ad related service first.

 

[Guest]

"And there's no place for ads that spread malware — a problem easily avoided if you use antivirus software."

As a tech 'journalist' you should know that prevention is better then cure. A virus scanner is only as good as its database. If it is a new virus then the scanner may not pick it up cause untold damage before it is recognised. By using ad-blocking I can prevent it from ever reaching my computer

 

[Dragos D]

I agree with everything the author said. I would just like to add, that every time I see an add that doesn't interest me, I am being robbed.

 

[Dragos D]

I agree with everything the author said. I would just like to add that every time i see an ad which doesn't interest me, I am being robbed.

 

[Guest]

Actually, you know what, this has made me delete my link to Tom's Hardware. Lost a reader here with this. Rather than take a balanced view you have pretty much placed all the blame on the user. Back when pop-ups started and flashing adverts became a 'thing' there was no ad-block software. I remember people bemoaning the aggressive use of it. THAT is what created the need for ad blocking software. Don't blame us for trying to have a peaceful life from the noise YOU created!

Bye Toms Hardware.

 

[Roger H Smith]

Wow.... what a stretch!! I thought I'd seen every pathetic use of "do it for the children" until now. I block ads because they detract from the performance of my computer and the overall speed of my internet performance for which I pay good money for. Besides, as a person who is forced to live on disability I'm not able to do much "discretionary spending" so I'm not in a position to be a potential customer anyway.

 

[tech-wreck]

nearly 300 comments that have been allowed to remain...
adblock isn't going away, so either don't rely on advertising for your financing, or cut operating costs. i can think of one good way to save cash: don't hire piltch to write any more contentious crap.

 

[Jeff Norris]

Conversly,

Ads are stealing user's time and bandwidth. People don't ask to be forced into downloading this extra bit of code, and it's extremely annoying! Get over yourself!

 

[neiroatopelcc]

This article is more or less bullbeep.
If anything, it is the advertisers stealing from us readers. Also you can't liken voluntary content filtering with stealing just because we're talking less than you want us to. Our time is our resource, not yours, to govern.
If advertising doesn't provide the revenue you need, find a different source. Most of the successful youtube channels use patreon or a similar service instead of, or on top of, youtube ads to cover their costs. I don't know how many options there are, but there are many.
And as for bribes - the recent indie developer situation shows that the whole tech branch is corrupt. I don't know if Tom's is part of it of course, but I'd not be surprised to be honest. Thus that argument is gone as well.

Also you still can't liken stealing a copy of a movie to stealing a pair of shoes. At best you can liken it to making a cheap china copy of the same shoes. Also illigal, but the latter is more correct as you don't actually remove the original, and you do still have to cover the costs of aquiring the fake.

And as a last thing, I'd like to point out how you're willfully harming the environment by causing much more strain on the readers computer and the internet paths utilized than actually needed by putting the equivalent of bloatware into your web pages.

 

[n0n1cK]

"journalists like me" how dare you call yourself a journalist? this isn't an article, it's a smear campaign.
"Every time you block an ad, what you're really blocking is food from entering a child's mouth."Seriously you can't get any lower then this, I stopped reading by this point.

Most ads can't even be called that any more they try to scam people into clicking then, webpages get completely cluttered, this has gone beyond what is acceptable and completely ruins our browsing experience.

Also there are alternatives do Adblock with no whitelist.

 

[giantbucket]

some sites are still nice enough to have a "printer friendly" link that displays the whole 12-page article as a single page with minimal ads. there's a review site that i ALWAYS have to do this on, because their reviews only take up maybe 20% of each page area, the rest being ads and banners and other garbage that is NOT the article. do a "print friendly" type of view and the ads are the thing that takes up no more than 20%.

that's how it should be. ads should be way smaller than the content. maybe that ought to be the legislation - max combined ad size, and no auto-play.

 

[MagicPants]

One thing I've noticed is there are whole lot of people replying to this thread who don't know what the word "customer" means. If you don't give them anything you are not the customer, the customer is the ad vendor.

Perhaps it is time to try a new business model? Maybe they could try linking access to some articles based on amazon (or newegg) purchases with a tom's referral link in them. It seems like I make so many purchases based on what I read here there should be a more direct way to make money. Maybe something like PC part picker but with tom's scores next to the parts and some way for the vendor to know the purchase was made from a Tom's user?

 

[McHenryB]

One thing I've noticed is there are whole lot of people replying to this thread who don't know what the word "customer" means.

No, I think you misunderstand what a customer is. As BusinessDirectory.com puts it, a customer is:

1.General: A party that receives or consumes products (goods or services) and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers.

There is no need to bring the concept of monetary payment into this relationship (although customers often do pay for goods).

The advertisement vendors are not customers of Tom's, they are employers of Tom's. They employ them to push advertisements for their products to the general populous, which Tom's do (pretty much without discrimination). That between them they are doing a bad job, to the extent that the true customers reject this part of the offering, demonstrates a poorly thought out business model. Essentially, they have now killed the goose that lays the golden eggs.

No doubt there are good, informative advertisers out there, but there are so many who are pushing snake oil in a particularly obnoxious way that people such as myself take a pragmatic view and just block all advertisements from all sites. And it's pretty much a case that you can't unring the bell. Now that consumers are behaving in that way they are not going to change back again. Articles like this are a reflection of the realization on the part of those who have cynically exploited consumers that there is a backlash and their methods don't work any longer. The answer is not to hit out at those customers who take steps to avoid the trash they are pedaling but to come up with a new business model that doesn't antagonize the consumer. Those that can do this will prosper; those that can't will go the way of the Dodo. Hitting out at your customers is the first indication that your business is failing. We have:

the ability to choose between different products and suppliers

and we will exercise that ability.

 

[damianrobertjones]

Maybe if you'd actually REVIEW machines like the Surface 3 and Surface 3 Pro I wouldn't feel the need to, pretty much, ignore your site.

 

[damianrobertjones]

ASK FOR DONATIONS and, once your target's met, REMOVE the ads. Ever thought of that?