Stop, Thief! Why Using an Ad Blocker Is Stealing

[mitsaras37]

I would really love to see what extensions are all those Pro-Ad campaigners use in their browsers.

 

[Tom Tancredi]

I agree on the extortion viewpoint, either you block ads or you don't, not "I will block you till you pay me not to", if that is the case (though I have NOT seen that -more adverts from those with big budgets- with any of the adblock software I use normally).

That said, I believe the author is coming from the viewpoint that the content posted to TH or any Online Medium is the sole and only property of said author, and we should in some way 'pay' for the privilege in some manner to the author for providing that content. As is the approach done by the mentioned Sony about it's Intellectual Property it created in the manner of a entertainment movie. This is both disproportionate and unequal comparison.

The author is misguided as the point of the Internet is access to everything for everyone no limitations. The point to 'share' information, not as a monetary revenue stream. Hence why ANYONE can get Internet access can just set any computer as a 'server' and dole out a website, aka a weBLOG, and post what they want for anyone to see.

As the author demands to be compensated for the work as Magazines do, newspapers, etc, but then again how many times in a given hour is someone picking up a Magazine, newspaper, etc. reads something then puts it back and walks away without paying - they STOLE that printed information didn't they? QUICK call the Police, this major crime has been costing publishers BILLIONS of dollars a month with all the news papers, magazines, zines, etc. at B. Daltons, Airports, Newsstands, Starbucks, etc. around the globe by Millions of people committing this heinous act. We should keep all print in any form with high end security guards to ensure that each author's child isn't starving because someone picked up World News Today at the checkstand and read how Elvis is running for the 2016 Election and put it back never paying the brilliant and hardworking author for that deep thinking extremely difficult piece of writing.

Seriously, you are completely off base on this article. You want to be compensated for your work, that it is that exclusive and that important, THEN make your own Pay for Online / Print magazine and charge people for it, stop working for TH or other 'websites'. Don't blame the viewers whom are trying to protect themselves from their machines being brought to its knees (remember what AOL did with the adverts and how that work out well for AOL???) or commonly not 'monitored' and instead either pushes malicious code / uses social engineering to make it appear TH / etc. knowledgeable authors are trying to 'help' the reader by alerting of a problem only fixable with Windows Antivirus 2016, etc. which is really malware/ransomware/etc.

 

[shad0wman]

I agree with you but you have the power to choose good ads or bad ads. If you wanna put up all the deceiving ads like YOU WON CLICK HERE TO RECEIVE VIRUSES then [i'm not happy - mod edit]. Put up some legit ads maybe do some background research on the company. Google Ads are fine, simple, small, non instrusive and I don't block them.

[Mod edits - please don't curse on the forums, it's against our policies]

 

[TechyInAZ]

Well I would have to agree and disagree with this.

I agree because lots of advertisements do need a source of income, however they could advertise better.

I disagree on some of the things you said because of 3 reasons:

1. Half the adds I see are inappropriate and go against my worldview of Christianity. An ad blocker helps me keep myself from these inappropriate distractions and allows me to use the internet without needing to worry about stumbling.
2. I have never EVER bought an item because I saw an ad on the TV or web. So either the advertisers have to do better at advertising, or look for other ways of income.
3. The WWW is not regulated via the government (at least for now), so for me to block ads on websites is perfectly legal.


Anyways these are my thoughts on the subject.

 

[Sam Bittermann]

When I stop getting infections or AV security prompts from 3rd party adds on websites even though I NEVER click on them I'll stop using Adblock. Ads are also becoming bloatware on every webpage as well...

 

[WRXSTIGuy]

Same thing happens when I browse using my mobile phone - it brings my phone to a crawl. I just avoid those websites from now on. I stopped watching TV because of ads. Prescription medication ads just make me sick. Ads used to be cool - especially beer and auto commercials back in the 80s.

 

[buhusky]

Once you guarantee that I won't get a virus from a malicious web advertisement I'll consider whitelisting sites that don't have obtrusive ads. If I were to unblock ads on a website that has obtrusive ads then I'd stop visiting the site anyway, so you wouldn't make money on me as it is. Two key words here - no viruses, unobtrusive ads.

 

[the_crippler]

Oh, what a flaming wad of whiny poppycock! I don't even really have anything to add that hasn't been said already.

Maybe I should just set up a filter for any articles by Avram Piltch? I mean, if I don't read any of their articles, I'm probably stealing from their kids' mouth, but at least I'm not stealing their content, right?

 

[dextermat]

The fact that the main add in the home page (http/www.driverupdate.net) is adware is the main reason I use adblock.

If serious website would not associate tho these kind of business, use fake download buton maybe we would not need that.

What about the people who get infected by adware, without their consent, isn't that stealing. It's definitively lying.

 

[Dyseman]

/wipes a tear. I don't think I've E V E R seen Every comment with a thumbs up on Tom's Hardware. nVidia/AMD Intel/AMD Android/Apple Fanboys/girls all have peace on this article. If only the world could come together like this. Just makes me *sob* so happy. Now excuse me while I weep tears of joy.

 

[Mike Malsed]

I appreciate all the lively debate, especially the disagreement. I'm always excited when one of my articles sparks a discussion (hopefully a respectful one on both sides).

The problem here is that your article was disrespectful toward your readers, calling many (a majority?) of us thieves. You would not have a platform from which to speak were it not for us, your readers.

Nobody likes the most annoying ads, not even the people who run them, and I think we're going to see a shaking out of some of the worst offenses, not because of ad blockers, but because of performance issues. However, when you run an ad blocker, you are denying a site all of its ad revenue which, for millions of content sites, is their main source of income. Eventually, this will lead not only to lots of lost jobs, but to the end of most free content on the web.

So, the business of running websites will have to be shaken out. Not because of ad blockers, but because the entire paradigm is flawed. We may SEE ads, but we don't click on them.

This has led to the more and greater intrusiveness and annoyingness (to coin a word) of ads, trying to get us to pay attention and to click on them. You, as a website, don't get much revenue from the ads themselves; you get revenue from click-through traffic. So you should be complaining not just about ad blocker users, but also ad ignorers. . .

I disagree that using an ad blocker is the same as a TV remote control or DVR fast forward. Neither of those remove the ads so you do have the opportunity to not change the channel or not fast forward. As a TV viewer, I usually end up watching commercials rather than bothering to switch back and forth and risk missing when the show comes back on. With DVRs, sometimes I just let it play because I'm too lazy to pick up the remote and, other times, I see a commercial that looks so interesting that I stop to watch it. That's not possible when all ads are filtered out before you can even choose to skip them.

You admit to watching commercials? When you can just click a button and skip them? Wow.

And if you have a site blocked and it is running mostly high-quality ads, you would never know.

This would assume there was such a thing as a high-quality ad.

Even during the Super Bowl. . . I'm still waiting.

 

[Campbell_1968]

I see no ads on this page, and I am not using any adblocker software. I am a Linux user, and I have a massive HOSTS file. In this event, I am not seeing the ads, but AdBlocker isn't holding your advertisers hostage, either.

 

[majorlag]

I tried for the longest time to not run Ad blocking, then one day last year, I was trying to read a great article on Tom's, An Ad poped up, I moved my mouse to it to close it, then moved the mouse off the screen to continue reading, it passed yet another Ad, this time I carefully moved my mouse around the maze of Ad hot words, closed the offending ad, and carefully traversed the maze to move the mouse out of the way, and BAM another $%#$% Ad. Never again!

The Ad industry needs to figure out why people have dumped cable and live TV for Netflix, DVR fast forward. People have said enough is enough. Trying to equate Ad blocking with starving children, is just low, and absurd. To that I say, then get a real job if you can't provide for your family!

Ads have gotten so bad, that without protecting ourselves, we are subjected to malware and viruses and ID theft, yes I just equated Ad blocking to protection and have a more solid argument then starving children!

I was just called last week, our parameter network security noticed an AD tried to contact a C&C server, normally I run Adblock plus, but I was on the server trying to get a driver for the tape drive. Yeah my fault, and normally I would have downloaded from my desktop, but I had only downloaded the tape library driver and not the tape drive driver, so I figured since I was already on the server, might as well go get it.

This is not the type of quality articles I expect from Tom's I come here to read Tech, not about some sob story and trying to convince me that I starve children, steal sandals and commit extortion. I take offense to that. I am a father, and upstanding citizen who works hard and provides for my family honorably, legally, proudly!

~Majorlag

 

[cchambers]

Oh please...Now I'm a thief because I don't allow adds to litter my web browsing experience? Add pushers are thieves for stealing my time by creating pop-ups that block me from viewing the content I'm trying to get to. I guess I'm also stealing when I use my junk mail filter and when I throw away junk mail from my snail mail box. Now I wish I had my time back from reading this gibberish. Ill-conceived article.

 

[rantoc]

One word - Security! Not having an ad blocker today is sadly asking for problems. Cry the other way Toms, its your advertizes that send out malware, not us readers who need to protect ourselves from those kind of threats!

I dint even need to go to the intrusive add parts to justify the usage of an ad blocker! The day you can 100% guarantee that your adds are secure and take full responsibility if they ain't - ill whitelist the site again, untill then - I need to protect my computer!

 

[Christopher Willoughby]

Wow! To be labeled a thief for defending myself and my family. I have 5 computers in my household, and before I started using ad blocking and script blocking software I had to spend hundreds of dollars every 2 to 3 months to keep my family's computers functioning. Who pays for that? That was money that didn't go to cloth my children, nor did it feed them, and who was it that took this from my kids and my family? Advertisers and content providers that use malicious advertising. I agree with the masses here as well. IF sites are going to start stopping me from viewing their content unless I allow them to infect and control my computers, then those said sites will no longer be visited by me or my family.

Clearly the person that wrote this article only thought about this from one side. And he seems to only be thinking about the monetary gains that he and his benefit from. He fails to see the amounts of money that his viewers spend on PC maintenance because of his sites failure to screen their code. Yet he has the audacity to call us thieves? I hope the moderators for this site are paying attention because they just lost a viewer. And while I am only one person, that is one person that will no longer use this site and hopefully will inspire others to seek their information elsewhere.

 

[whiteodian]

Ad-block has their own browser!! Thank you. I will be trying this out pronto. I don't mind well placed unobtrusive ads, but Tom's is one of the worst. I don't even like to bring it up on my phone because when I go to scroll through an article, it goes suuuuper slow. Why? There is an ad that is there and Tom's really wants to make me see it. Even if it annoys the hell out of me to the point that I don't want to even view Tom's on my phone.

 

[beoza]

You know I distinctly remember reading close to a month ago that AdBlock Plus had won a court case against Germany's Die Zeit and Handelsblatt where they claimed that blocking ads was illegal and threatened their ability to make money. The German court in Hamburg thought otherwise and said it's not illegal and people have a right to block what ads show up on our computers. Now living in the US this ruling doesn't affect me but I agree with the German courts ruling; this is MY computer and I have a right to say what shows up on my screen. Just because I visit your site does not mean you can bombard me with all sorts of adverts for crap I have no interest in. I have ABP turned off for certain sites that I like and that don't have intrusive adverts such as newegg, and game publisher sites (their auto playing of game demo videos are annoying though). Here on Toms I have to use ABP since you have very large banners at the top that pop up after everything else has loaded and I go to click on a link to an article and instead get the stupid advert! These adds also take up a lot of room on the screen even at 1920x1080. Lets not even start talking about the links to certain key words in articles that bring up adverts.

Saying I'm stealing from someone and preventing them from putting food in a childs mouth!? Come on now that's just trying to prey on peoples emotions, which I might add is a favorite tactic of politicians. Don't shift the blame on lost revenue to the consumer, place the blame where it should be, on the advertisers! If they didn't use such annoying ads in the first place and try to shove their wares down our throats on every site we go to and try to track our web viewing habits there would be no need for apps like ABP, NoScript and others.

 

[McHenryB]

I think perhaps it boils down to this. If your business model is such that it leads a large number of customers to take steps to bypass it then there is something wrong with your business model. Instead of attacking your customers for trying to ensure they have a safe and pleasant experience with your product you should perhaps examine that business model.

The worrying thing is that you are not just some hack journalist, you are the Editorial Director on this site. If this is an example of the judgement that you exercise in that role that it casts a deep cloud over the impartiality of content on the site. This is a defite self-inflicted shot in the foot for Toms.

 

[rayden54]

Wow. You guys just lost any and all respect you ever had from me.

Pop ups, pop unders, freaking TALKING ads, not to mention proving a pathway for viruses. There's really a lot of things I could say about why people block ads, but what it really comes down to is this: When it's your computer and your internet and your money then you can decide what to display. Until then, it's none of your business.