Stop, Thief! Why Using an Ad Blocker Is Stealing

[TheAC]

So is it stealing when I pay attention to the road while driving instead of the advertisement signage on the sides of the highways?

Ad blocking is the equivalent of getting up on a ladder and spray painting whiteout over the billboard so you won't accidentally see it out of the corner of your eye.

Why? Oh why did you just go there...

That reasoning actually just hurt my brain.

My brain is offended, thanks.

 

[McHenryB]

So is it stealing when I pay attention to the road while driving instead of the advertisement signage on the sides of the highways?

Ad blocking is the equivalent of getting up on a ladder and spray painting whiteout over the billboard so you won't accidentally see it out of the corner of your eye.

No, because that blocks the advertisement from everybody. Ad blocking is the equivalent of putting down my sun visor so that I can concentrate on the job of driving rather than being distracted. Unfortunately you just don't seem to get the concept that an individual has the right of choice.

And you still haven't addressed the failings of the advertisements that you want to force upon us. Sort that out first and then maybe we can have a discussion. I'm disappointed by the lack of precision in the argument from a professional journalist.

 

[apiltch]

you seem to have nothing to say in answer to the many criticisms regarding such advertisements - an acceptable way of financing the site, to the extent that you label those who disagree as "thieves". So what other "compromises" may you be willing to make in your editorial capacity? We can only speculate.

At most publications, including ours, there's a healthy separation between editorial and advertising. If I see something broken or annoying on one of our sites, I report it. I don't sell ads, traffick ads or decide what ads do and don't appear. However, just like our readers, I visit the site every single day with all the ads in place. I also visit a lot of other sites and I don't block their ads either.

I think the Next Web also has a great perspective on this.

http/thenextweb.com/insider/2015/05/17/adblockers-are-immoral-and-mobile-networks-should-know-better/

I'm taking a position that I think is very reasonable for anyone who works in media. We can't control the ads, but we rely on ad revenue in general. Ad blockers block everyone, with the exception of a few sites that have gotten onto the white list or pay to play. If you are running a blocker and a site has ads that you would find acceptable but they are blocked, how would you know?

Someone who works in the music industry is probably opposed to illegal music downloading and someone who works for a software company probably feels the same way about piracy.

 

[giantbucket]

So is it stealing when I pay attention to the road while driving instead of the advertisement signage on the sides of the highways?

Ad blocking is the equivalent of getting up on a ladder and spray painting whiteout over the billboard so you won't accidentally see it out of the corner of your eye.

no it isn't. adblocker only blocks the ad on MY computer. if the other guy doesn't have an adblocker, he WILL see the ad, so it's NOT like painting over the billboard (which by the way is vandalism / willful destruction of someone else's property)

and as has been mentioned before, anyone who uses an adblocker is NOT stealing, they are simply declining to be spoken to. that's not even close to being the same.

if you make money by talking, and I don't attend your seminar, then I'm not stealing from you. I'm just not purchasing your services.

again and again you seem to have a sense of entitlement, as if the world OWES you an income because of an ad.

we don't.

 

[McHenryB]

Someone who works in the music industry is probably opposed to illegal music downloading and someone who works for a software company probably feels the same way about piracy.

Now you really let yourself down when you start to make straw men arguments equating an individual exercising his right to choose what he does not want to run on his computer with software piracy.

One is the right to choose, something that people have fought for down the ages; if I'm correct in thinking that you live in "the land of the free", you should appreciate that sort of right. The other is an illegal activity. (I realize that you have tried to label ad-blocking an illegal activity by using such pejorative terms as "thief" and "stealing", but both you and I know that it has been determined that ad-blockers are perfectly legal.)

You really shouldn't insult our intelligence, and denigrate your own, by using such specious arguments. You are a professional journalist - can't you do any better than straw men and deliberate mistruths?

 

[spankmon]

There's really no need for argument. I've already seen this notification on other websites... "Please Disable Your Ad Blocking Software to Access This Content"... which is YOUR tool to fight ad-blockers, and equally as powerful as our tool to fight unwanted advertisements (ad-blocking).

 

[McHenryB]

Here's a little thought - just in case there are any journalists following this thread.

Either this is a big problem, with a lot of people using ad-blockers, or else it's just a small minority. If the latter, what's the fuss - there's still plenty of income from those who don't block ads. But if the former is the case - and I assume that the author of this article must think that is so - then rather than just saying they shouldn't how about doing a little investigation to find out why they do so. What have advertisers and/or publishers done to so pee off people that they find it necessary to run additional software (with all the implications for stability and performance that that entails) to block their material? And what can said publishers/advertisers do to remedy this situation?

I can't believe that advertisers really want to antagonize people by pushing stuff at them that they don't want to view and that, if anything, will persuade them not to buy products from that supplier. The only people I know who act that way are those spammers who endlessly mail people with offers of Viagra, penis enhancers, and the like in the hope that just a small percentage will respond. (OK - I admit it; I block such emails. I don't look at them all on the off chance that I might want to follow up that offer to share $5,000,000 with a Nigerian princess. Mea culpa.) Is that the image that reputable companies want to build for themselves? And are those the sort of people that reputable publishers want to rely upon for a living? You might as well just be done with it and sell cocaine - the returns are much higher even if it is a little risky. Don't publishers have morals, or do they just expect their customers to have them?

So, rather than putting the blame on the individual end-users, how about addressing the real root of the problem. How about writing articles about unscrupulous advertisers? Who knows, given time you might even be able to win back the trust of some of the people who now just automatically block all marketing material. But you are never going to get the trust of people by labelling them as thieves, by equating individual freedom of choice with illegal activities. That's something out of 1984 or the heyday of communist Russia. Big Brother doesn't know best.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Just today I was reading an article on a website and a full screen ad pops up. When I hit the X button, it took me to the ad's website! If I went back a page in my browser, the same page kept popping up and was impossible to close without inspecting the source code and hiding the element manually (Yep CSS modding was the only way). That is why an ad blocker is necessary.

Of the 6 out of 10000 people who click on adds, I bet all 6 accidentally click them, too.

 

[jdb26354]

Time is a war. Adblock is just one weapon in this war. The marketers will come up with responses. But lay down my arms? Never.

 

[regretela]

I don't want to look at pictures of almost naked babes...sorry

 

[LukeyL]

I kind of want to post solely to highlight this line from this article:

"Every time you block an ad, what you're really blocking is food from entering a child's mouth."

The fact that someone actually wrote that sentence presumably with a straight face is, I think, a representative example that is all that really needs to be said about this article as a whole.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I kind of want to post solely to highlight this line from this article:

"Every time you block an ad, what you're really blocking is food from entering a child's mouth."

The fact that someone actually wrote that sentence presumably with a straight face is, I think, a representative example that is all that really needs to be said about this article as a whole.

I agree, I think that was a bit too far. It's not really blocking food from entering childrens' mouths, it's blocking more money from getting to rich people (well, depends on the business).

If you want to give children food, go to freerice.com. That is a legitimate website where you should not run an Adblocker because every time you view it the company gets more money from the ad companies and it donates a large sum of it to the poor as rice.

 

[razor512]

Due to the potential for harm, advertising relies on trust. The trust that tomshardware is asking of us, is of a level that would be unacceptable anywhere else. if you want to test them, I recommend you go to an airport and if before scanning anything, a guard asks you something like "did you pack the bags yourself?", then tell them "No, I did not, but but this random guy that I met at the bar, packed them for me and told me to bring them to this airport"

After you do that, tell us how they respond. Before going, tell us what you imagine the response will be.

With websites, we the users are able to do our due diligence, and determine if the site is trustworthy. But with ads where you are essentially providing an unknown 3rd party access to host whatever they want on portions of your site, then we have a problem. as the safety of the main site becomes irreverent, we are now dealing with an unknown variable that had many chances to be malicious. (browsing through this article can easily increment the adblocked counter 40+ times. that is 40+ attempts at the Russian roulette

If you want to improve the trust in your site, then meet us half way by ensuring that you packed your packets yourself.

 

[zoenphlux]

I had to get an ad blocker, because I couldn't enjoy reading on your page. Your page was the main reason I got it. I can deal with advertisements on the side, but it hit a point where you had several WITHIN the article breaking it up so much I got sick of figuring out where to go next to read. Reading articles and news is supposed to be a casual thing, not a profession. If it becomes a too much of a hassle, you will loose the reader entirely. Ad blockers have SAVED your site from loosing many people.

I understand you do need advertisements to make a living, but you need to do a better job of where you put them. Show us, the readers, that you are hearing us and changing the placement of your ads, as well as you personally verify each ad, then I will white list this site.

 

[techguy911]

OP should read this: https/threatpost.com/ad-networks-ripe-for-abuse-via-malvertising/111840

Problem is the advertising network is not secure 90% malware is pushed through ads sorry to say but if they don't fix the system people will keep block ads.
Had a customer surfed facebook hit with bad ads that infected him with cryptowall 3 lost all his photos was not going to pay $1000 to get them back.

 

[JeckeL]

I think everyone should refrain from harassing the author and being rude in general. You can't condemn someone for their opinion; at the very least I'm thankful for the interesting thread/article... lots of interesting stuff

 

[McHenryB]

I think everyone should refrain from harassing the author and being rude in general. You can't condemn someone for their opinion; at the very least I'm thankful for the interesting thread/article... lots of interesting stuff

I think that most people here, with a few exceptions, have been considerably more polite to the author than he was to them. Expressing an opinion is fine; calling people thieves is not so polite.

And I'm sure that you respect the right of all of us to express our opinions, not just the author.

As to whether you can condemn someone for their opinion - well I am pretty intolerant of people who express certain opinions. I'm sure you must be too.

 

[Kadathan]

Just throwing my opinion in the bucket... I want to agree with the author, but too many people have too many good points. Security and presentation matter much more than advertising. If Tom's (Or any other site) has a problem with people using ad blockers, there's a few measures they could take. They could try to circumvent the blockers, which will serve to anger their reader base, they could appeal to them to remove the ads (Which requires a lot more open communication and something more than an Op Ed article that the site distances itself from) or they could simply block anyone with an adblocker from accessing content.
The third is the most displeasing, and many people certainly would choose to find their news elsewhere rather than give in and subject themselves to malware vectors. But it would be interesting to see, I wonder who would end up helping the site's success more: The users who use adblockers but contribute to search engine hit counts for tom's and provide support in the forums, or the theoretical users who would turn off their adblockers to keep access to the site in the case that content was blocked.

Ultimately, I think what many have said is quite true, that a new business model is needed. This one has seen it's prime and is rapidly reaching it's end of life. If at this point the advertising gamut hasn't sorted itself out to be reliable, safe and efficient, it's just not going to happen and more and more abuse will come through the pipes. This isn't a problem that is fixable by appealing to adblockers or by circumventing ad blockers, because the root of the problem isn't the adblockers people are using. The problem is and always will be the ads.

 

[chfireball]

I pay $62 a month for internet! you need to feed your kids? get another job! or get some money from the Isp's that charge to much!

 

[Colbster23]

If ads had valuable content, I wouldn't block them. I'm tired of the fat burning ads and other misleading and SPAM ads. Get a real job if you want to feed your kids. Writing on the internet should be free.