Most free web sites pay for their upkeep with ads. It has been an unwritten agreement since forever (or at least as long as there have been ads on the web) that if you consume the content, you pay the creator by looking at the ads on their site.
Consuming the content without looking at the ads is like shoplifting because you don’t like the way a store’s checkout counter works and/or the fact that they want money from you at all.
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I wish it was.
If that was the case I’d just F5 some companies into bankruptcy. Sadly, it’s not.
I think I’d be ok with removing my ad blocker if ads were simple and non intrusive and creators actually got a decent chunk of the ad revenue. The reason I use it however is that most websites have proven that if you give them an inch they’ll take a mile. So many websites now have so many ads that the actual content is barely visible through the mid-page ads, auto play videos, popups and banners. And that’s not even mentioning the tracking and cookies they now request/use. The internet has become unusable without an ad blocker. If I want to support someone’s content I’d rather use whatever donation method they have set up.
Only in the same way you’re supporting the local economy by being pickpocketed. There are better and less shady ways of doing it.
I would love to support sites by viewing their ads, but I object to the behind-the-scenes data transactions that are associated with ads. maybe I’ll click, maybe not, but creating profiles of me that people sell is not acceptable.
If using a adblocker is theft then watching a commercial without buying the product is theft.
or not watching the commercial.
By what logic?
OP’s logic
Please elaborate. The connection between the two claims isn’t obvious to me.
Counterpoint: The checkout counter at the store doesn’t follow me out into the parking lot, grab my license place number and sell it to whoever wants it, or follow me into other stores.
Definitely an unpopular opinion, though! Take my upvote.
They may grab your payment info though, and use it to build a profile of you that tracks your spending habits to share with others.
Source: was one of the people whose cards had been compromised by the massive data breach Target had about a decade or so ago, because Target had been saving payment information on every customer to build profiles from.
Now I think the newer chip-based cards and tap to pay have made it harder to track customers, but that’s basically why every company is trying to push its own app these days.
What about people who pay for their internet by data used, is the website not stealing from the user by wasting data with the unwatned ads?
Remember print magazines and newspapers? Ads pay a large portion of the costs of producing them, but no reader is obliged to look at any ads at all. Advertisers pay for a chance to be seen, not for an obligation for anyone to look at them. Since nobody has any obligation to read the ads, avoiding them cannot be a violation. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
I was working with a different definition of ‘look at’. When reading a magazine (according to my definition), you will look at the ad, because you never know whether a given page will contain an ad or editorial content. Your eyes will fall upon the ad, and then you move on, likely not really taking it in unless it manages to catch your eye. Same with me and web ads. Most will barely register, as the majority is really not that interesting - but sometimes, I will take a closer look, and very occasionally even click on one.
Where I live, newspapers come with a separate detached portion that are all ads. With your logic, I’m obligated to have to read them too and not just throw them out?
- you pay the content creator by buying their content, not by browsing ads on their site – ads are a really annoying tip jar being waved in your face when you’re trying to hand money to the cash register
- advertisers have been given plenty of warning to behave themselves and they refuse, they are parasitic leeches bleeding both creator and purchaser
- adblockers are the effect, not the cause
- original websites were ad free
- banner ads were added and we tolerated them
- advertisers then added in distracting flashing effects, loud audio cues, broke security with Flash, broke accessibility
- adblockers invented
- advertisers shed crocodile tears and pretend to be contrite
- advertisers start pushing tracking, malware, phishing, crypto-miners
- adblockers are now as important as antivirus for the safety of your computer/tablet/phone
Definitely was one of the ones way back who said "If they keep it classy I won’t disable my adblocker. I want to say, generously, that maybe 10% of sites made ads that weren’t intrusive. Ad companies can’t handle themselves, they have to take over the entire page and distract from the content. It’s their own fault we use ad blockers.
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B. There are sites I appreciate which don’t allow you to pay to disable ads - so I sometimes take a look at one or two.There are others where the ads get annoying, so I stay away, or leave when I’ve had enough of 35 animations slowing down my web browser.
I have yet to see an ad that managed compromise the safety of my computer (knocks on wood). I am aware that this has happened, but I would be really cross with BitDefender if it happened to me.
LOL
I don’t agree, but thanks for posting an actually unpopular opinion. Based on the voting, this sub should just get renamed to popularopinion and be done with it.
Why? In Reddit you can’t reply if you get downvoted so there’s an incentive to flip upvoting and downvoting.
In Lemmy there’s no such mechanic so why flip them?
I think downvotes on truly unpopular opinions probably come from users who don’t notice which community the post is in.
That’s certainly a good explanation, but it really calls into question the viability of a sub like this. On reddit, the engaged folks drown it out and mostly keep the unpopular opinions intact. This and the super highly-upvoted political stuff just makes it look like this sub has no purpose at all.
Upvoted for unpopular and for making clear, legitimate points in favour.
That said, I partially agree. Serving content costs money, as does investigating, reporting and writing it. Paywalls are the Black Death of the Internet, so what else remains? A creator fee as provided by Brave in the past was nice but didn’t work. Donations are scarce, small and unreliable. Advertising has proven to work well for old school newspapers and magazines, so it’s an understandable choice.
However, from advertising it escalated extremely quickly into the Stasi-inspired tracking-snooping-profiling fuckfest it has become, not taking into account the disgusting ad-to-content ratio, pop-ups, pop-overs and yes, pop-unders, flashing banners, animated swf banners and the abuse of the ad markets by malware and espionage groups.
And I too, Gandalf, I was there, 3000 years ago, when my wizard wrote the OSF1 binaries on the securely aligned platters of oulde.
Unpopular indeed.
Not sure if the opinion is popular or not, but only ⅓ of web users even use ad blockers.
Honestly, that seems high
That’s mostly because at least 70% of web users nowadays have no clue what they’re doing.
One counterpoint I would have is that I believe most ads are paid per-click? I actively refuse to click on any internet ad anyway, might as well block it.
