Jimquisition: The Adblock Episode

[Thanatos2k]

I'm arguing the point that "there is no freedom of speech on the internet." This is patently false. Those third-party sites have their own freedom of speech, and the internet does not obsolete the First Amendment or eliminate freedom of speech in any way.

You argument is like saying there is no freedom of speech in the press, because a newspaper doesn't print your letters.

When I or anyone else says "the internet" we're referring to the conglomerate of all third party sites that make it up, not web sites that you personally run. Just like when people say "the press" they're not referring to the newspaper you run out of your basement.

This kind of hyper-anal semantic arguing to be "right" helps no one, wins no brownie points, and pretty much only lowers everyone's opinion of you, causing others to stop taking other things you say seriously. Stop it for all our sakes.

Oh, but I do. Adblock proves you wrong on this.

What you can do and what you should do are two different things. I can steal things from a store, but that doesn't invalidate me saying "You don't get to walk in a store and grab whatever you want without paying."

See, you have this strange problem with English that seems to cause you to become hyper literal when it serves you, then abstract when it doesn't. Again, just makes others disregard your arguments because it's clear you're not in this for honest debate.

Or I could just block ads. Why is it up to me? How about they stop putting their ads up on the internet if they don't want them blocked? Like I said, I never agreed with them putting ads on the internet in the first place.

Keep taking from the tray. Who cares about everyone else, eh?

I already did elaborate. Internet infrastructure could easily be provided by private telecommunications companies, as it already is. ISPs generally don't rely on web ads for their revenue. We pay by subscribing to the phone lines, wireless services, etc. Parts of it is also provided by Universities and such.

Infrastructure could also be provided by governments as a public good, in the way that highways, Public Transport (and network infrastructure, for that matter) is in many places. The internet and its infrastructure existed long before web advertising did. Web advertising did not cause this infrastructure to exist, it just rides on the back of it.

And people like you are blowing through the tollways without paying. "*I* never agreed for them to put tollways on the road! I don't believe in tollways!"

The internet did not exist *sustainably* at the current scale before advertising did. The internet you refer to was a private one completely run and operated by a select few, not the "public" internet you espouse above where you claim we have freedom of speech.

It's baffling you want to return to those days. And a little disturbing. Anti-technology, or just curmudgeony?

And there's the selfishness of "we deserve a revenue stream" and "who cares about the public good" from those who push advertising, as well as the untrue arguments like your notion that the internet is somehow built on web advertising.

The internet is a LUXURY item, like video games or movies. Plenty of people live without it. Public good? You're really going to try that angle?

But they are not run via web ads. And I didn't say all of it has to be non-commercial. Internet infrastructure has long consisted of a hybrid of public and private resources. None of it depends on web advertising.

What does it matter? Are you really so against advertising you'd tear the whole system down with you just to get rid of ads and dance in the ashes?

Again, a bit disturbing. I don't want to see the internet you envision, and I'd hazard a guess few would.

Why not? It's true. There's not much that's interesting online. It's not worth my time visiting a heap of websites. I have a job and other hobbies to spend my time on.

Again, I have no faith whatsoever that this is true. Or you're 75. Though my grandma probably visits around 10 sites a month, but even she checks her email.

Yep. Companies that want to own the internet, and want to own all the information about you that they can gather, and sell it to even bigger scum like predatory advertisers.

I'm starting to get it, you're one of those anti-establishment types. It's a wonder you're still using the internet at all after the whole NSA thing.

Also you're quite ignorant of what data is actually gathered and for what. I'll let you in on a little secret, most of that targeting data that companies like Google gather? They don't sell it. They hoard it. They hoard it because it gives them a competitive advantage over other ad networks. Some places gather data to sell (Twitter, for example, makes quite the living selling their demographic data) but the big companies jealously hoard all they can get for themselves.

 

[KisaiTenshi]

I don't know what weird parallel universe you guys are in.

Depending on your location, the time of the year, and if there is a feature ad campaign running, the ad content can vary. Particularly for those outside the US. Most ads are targeted to US viewers, so those in other regions often have far fewer ads.

And if there is a major feature ad campaign on, that can greatly increase the intrusiveness of ads on The Escapist.

I'm totally aware of that.

Oh look the Captcha...

The intrusiveness of ads is something the site owner has control over. Generally comics and gaming sites balk at having any kind of pop-over event, and indeed you only see these and interstitial ads on sites run by large corporations own newspaper sites. The types of ad behavior described by direkiller is consistent with that of piracy sites, not legitimate content.

If someone is allowing these things to appear, then whoever is in charge of the advertisements needs to clarify that this if this is intended or unintended behavior. Some campaigns are bait-and-switches. While you may view it on a desktop browser, people on mobile devices get something completely different. The most complained about ad I ever had to deal with is the Candy Crush Appstore Hijacking.

 

[rayen020]

Fun Fact: I don't generally have adblock. If the Ads support the site i like then i will gladly scroll past them in so the website can get it's due (i know it doesn't actually work like that but it's the thought that counts). However while watching this video my web browser crash 3(!) times because of the side video ad. In a fit of rage i installed an adblock plugin.

EDIT; Let me state for the record I'm still letting Ads go up on the escapist home page, just not the video pages.

 

[faefrost]

It's like the piracy argument.

"We don't want games with DRM."
"We don't want games with a force online component."
"We don't want games with microtransactions."
"We don't want games with online passes."
"We don't want games with shoehorned multiplayer."
"Give us all that and we'll buy your game"

And then everyone pirates it anyways.

You're just speaking for yourself.

This isn't a democracy. You don't get to decide what ads sites run. Either view them or don't view the site. Your line of thinking is pure selfishness.

And yet Steam and GOG remain some of the most profitable ventures out there, do they not? Apple is making money hand over fist with iTunes and the App store. And it goes back to KiasaiTenshi's arguments that "ad blockers are forcing a change in content and thereby stealing" etc etc (sorry not going to go back through that wall of text replies to find the exact quote. But really what's going on here is simple Market forces. The customer base will tell the content provider what the price they are willing to pay is. If you see AdBlocker use going up on your sites it means that the nature and intrusiveness of your ads have exceeded your markets willingness to tolerate them. And it really is that simple. Advertising is not a license to do whatever you want and shout "nothing is free". That is just as much of a cop out as the lame assed excuses used by those who pirate music games etc. And no this is NOT the same as pirating. The content providers are putting the content out there with no charge or contractual relationship between themselves and the consumers. They have a hope or reasonable expectation that enough of them will watch the ads to pay their bills. But the consumers have no obligation to do such. Those consumers have every right to exercise total control over what data enters their private computer systems, and may reasonably set limits as to such. The goal for the content provider is to find the balance point where the average user is either willing to allow the ad content or that the ad content is non invasive enough where the consumer does not feel compelled to restrict it.

 

[Cerebrawl]

snip

WTF man?

I did not say what you quoted me as saying.

Don't put words in my mouth. Those are from Thanatos2k.

Heck I agree with your argument but don't be misquoting people!

 

[Aardvaarkman]

When I or anyone else says "the internet" we're referring to the conglomerate of all third party sites that make it up, not web sites that you personally run.

But it includes websites I personally run as well. And it doesn't preclude freedom of speech for those third parties.

This kind of hyper-anal semantic arguing to be "right" helps no one, wins no brownie points, and pretty much only lowers everyone's opinion of you, causing others to stop taking other things you say seriously. Stop it for all our sakes.

Firstly, it's not semantic arguing. Maybe you should look up what "semantic" means, because that's not what I'm arguing about. Furthermore - how are we supposed to have a proper basis for discussion if things that are incorrect are allowed to stand.

You made an argument that was wrong. I countered it. Am I supposed to just let you say incorrect and misleading things? And how are people supposed to take you seriously if you say things that aren't true. I'm not doing this for "brownie points" or anything.

What you can do and what you should do are two different things. I can steal things from a store, but that doesn't invalidate me saying "You don't get to walk in a store and grab whatever you want without paying."

Blocking ads isn't the same as stealing. And you have presented no good arguments that we shouldn't block ads. Your argument is essentially "it's bad."

See, you have this strange problem with English that seems to cause you to become hyper literal when it serves you, then abstract when it doesn't. Again, just makes others disregard your arguments because it's clear you're not in this for honest debate.

Quite the opposite. I'm simply being literal, not hyper-literal. And I'm certainly here for honest debate. What is it that suggests I'm not? I've been responding politely and taking your arguments at face value. What more am I supposed to do? Read things into your argument that aren't there, like you did with my posts? That's what makes me wonder if you're here for honest debate, when you literally start putting words into my mouth.

Or I could just block ads. Why is it up to me? How about they stop putting their ads up on the internet if they don't want them blocked? Like I said, I never agreed with them putting ads on the internet in the first place.

Keep taking from the tray. Who cares about everyone else, eh?

Keep taking what from the tray? And who else am I harming?

And people like you are blowing through the tollways without paying. "*I* never agreed for them to put tollways on the road! I don't believe in tollways!"

What do you mean, "people like me"? I certainly pay when I go on a tollway. The tollway analogy doesn't work, because the advertisers did not build the freeways.

The internet did not exist *sustainably* at the current scale before advertising did. The internet you refer to was a private one completely run and operated by a select few, not the "public" internet you espouse above where you claim we have freedom of speech.

The rise of advertising is coincidental with the rise of the internet in general. The advertising did not cause the internet to grow. And there was a widespread public internet before ads became really big business.

It's baffling you want to return to those days. And a little disturbing. Anti-technology, or just curmudgeony?

Nope. Pro-technology, pro-freedom, pro-culture, and pro-society. Pro intelligence and human evolution.

The internet is a LUXURY item, like video games or movies. Plenty of people live without it. Public good? You're really going to try that angle?

Absolutely. It should not be considered a luxury. It's extremely important to the public good. It can have a huge impact on things like education and health and well-being. It can benefit remote communities and the underprivileged immensely. Of course the advertising-driven side of the internet tends to do away with the good things, in favor of dumbing people down.

What does it matter? Are you really so against advertising you'd tear the whole system down with you just to get rid of ads and dance in the ashes?

But it wouldn't tear the whole system down. Advertisers are a parasite on the system. The system would be much better off without them.

Again, a bit disturbing. I don't want to see the internet you envision, and I'd hazard a guess few would.

So, you don't want to see an internet where people freely communicate and advance social and technological goals without the impediment of attention-driven superficial media?

Again, I have no faith whatsoever that this is true. Or you're 75. Though my grandma probably visits around 10 sites a month, but even she checks her email.

Which is another thing being lost - email, one of the most perfect communication systems humans have ever devised, is being supplanted by idiotic things like Twitter.

Also you're quite ignorant of what data is actually gathered and for what. I'll let you in on a little secret, most of that targeting data that companies like Google gather? They don't sell it. They hoard it. They hoard it because it gives them a competitive advantage over other ad networks. Some places gather data to sell (Twitter, for example, makes quite the living selling their demographic data) but the big companies jealously hoard all they can get for themselves.

Well no, they don't sell the data directly to the advertiser, they use the data to sell you to the advertiser.

 

[Coruptin]

well... the videos dont properly run anymore. i guess ill just have to be content with the articles, many of which are very much worth reading, if i want to continue supporting jim
woohoo~

to pub club it is i suppose

 

[faefrost]

snip

WTF man?

I did not say what you quoted me as saying.

Don't put words in my mouth. Those are from Thanatos2k.

Heck I agree with your argument but don't be misquoting people!

My appologies I miss edited that

 

[FoolKiller]

I don't use it but I can see the appeal. Every time the Escapist had intrusive ads and even intrusive captchas I just stopped coming to the site for a while. It's sad but the bad ads drive me away from the site.

 

[KisaiTenshi]

And it was overrun with spam, which was because the cost of entry to advertising on usenet and email was exactly 0$+ a throw away AOL account.

You obviously weren't around in the early 90s, because the spam onslaught didn't come until later. Hell, AOL didn't come to USENET until later.

Oh I indeedly do remember the early 90's of using Gopher and FTP to find nothing. I happened to find out about the WWW by accident, Trumpet Winsock, NSCA Mosaic, Windows 3.1 . The unwashed masses didn't get onto the internet until Microsoft helped them with Windows 95OSR2. Prior to that it was AOL, or you had an installation disk from your ISP that gave you a whole whopping 10 hours of internet per month.

I would much rather not return to the days of metered-by-the-second internet. I had one unlimited college connection, but even that was limited to a total bandwidth of 64K for everyone in the city to share. Let's move past this now.

Right. I pay for my bandwidth. The site pays for its bandwidth. If the site chooses to transmit a video to me with its bandwidth, what is being stolen? It's their choice to serve that video to me. Not theft.

The site isn't choosing to transmit anything, you are choosing to request data from it.

I prefer to pay for content directly, rather than via proxies like advertisers. So, I will pay for content where I can. If I can't, and it's ad-supported, I usually just don't bother. Ideally it would even better to pay the content creator directly rather than going through intermediaries like publishers, too.

So would a lot of people like to pay for single channels on their cable, or cut off the TV part entirely and just pay for data, but this doesn't happen because of packaging agreements. 10,000 people paying the same amount per month, divided over all the content creators, means everyone gets to play, provided they contribute equally. Internet service providers should never have been permitted to own content and vice versa, because it puts them in a compromising position of being able to prefer their own content for "free" by subsidizing it with the internet side. I'd really love to have those cheap asian internet rates, but alas we don't live over there. We live in the land of asymmetric internet so nobody can run their own servers from home.

Here is one of the big hypocrisies I find with these argument. A lot of the people who argue for the advertising do so from the perspective of the content creator or site owner getting paid. So they say it's theft to block ads - but then say you don't actually have to watch them.

But isn't that unfair on the advertiser who paid for the ad? By advocating that the viewer let the ads run but not watch them, isn't that "stealing" (as you describe it) from the advertiser by the content creator? Why is it bad to block the ads, but OK to not watch the ads and bilk the advertiser out of the attention they want on the ad?

Why is the concern only for the site owner/content creator, and not the company trying to sell their product, who pays for the ad in the first place?

Nobody ever expects a 100% click-thru rate any more than any newspaper advertisement ever expects someone to buy every single thing in the newspaper. Ads are about putting that brand in peoples heads. Why else would McDonalds and Coke constantly advertise in absolutely everything? Do you think they sell a BigMac and a Coke every time an ad airs to everyone that sees it? You block the ad, that brand disappears from the page. One of the reasons retargeting works at all is that you see ads for sites you actually visited at some point.

Why would anyone pay to advertise on a sporting event and fields/arenas? Because that's where the eyeballs are. Half those brands probably don't even have much presence in the city they are in. They're only advertising in that space because they know it will be seen nationally on TV.

Nobody is foolish enough to think there will be a 100% purchase rate from seeing an ad. But everyone who sees it enough will remember it. And yes, some advertisers believe it's stealing if you aren't glued to the chair while their ad loads, fortunately ads aren't allowed to use your video camera to verify that. Good thing Microsoft doesn't require the Kinect to be always on... oh wait

 

[Cerebrawl]

It's like the piracy argument.

"We don't want games with DRM."
"We don't want games with a force online component."
"We don't want games with microtransactions."
"We don't want games with online passes."
"We don't want games with shoehorned multiplayer."
"Give us all that and we'll buy your game"

And then everyone pirates it anyways.

So that's why I haven't pirated a game in many years, have quite a bit over 100 games on steam, and a couple of dozen over on gog.com(would be more but they have a limited selection), because why would I buy games on that are without DRM? That's right, to support the game companies I like, and support the practice of not having DRM.

The games that most sorely tempt me to pirate them are the DRM-ladden garbage, just so I don't have to deal with it, but I've got such a large game backlog that I don't even bother, I just boycott them outright. Heck I skipped out on Dark Souls on 90% steam sale because I saw it used Games for Windows Live, automatic boycott right there. A missed sale 100% due to DRM.

I am not alone in boycotting the most invasive DRMs, microtransactions, and the like. There's quite a lot of us, and we don't all resort to piracy either.

It also irks many of us that those who pirate certain games have a better user experience because they don't have to put up with the bullshit that us paying customers do.

 

[Coruptin]

and now i cant get avatars to work properly

thanks obama

edit: literally only one picture works

 

[Thanatos2k]

It's like the piracy argument.

"We don't want games with DRM."
"We don't want games with a force online component."
"We don't want games with microtransactions."
"We don't want games with online passes."
"We don't want games with shoehorned multiplayer."
"Give us all that and we'll buy your game"

And then everyone pirates it anyways.

So that's why I haven't pirated a game in many years, have quite a bit over 100 games on steam, and a couple of dozen over on gog.com(would be more but they have a limited selection), because why would I buy games on that are without DRM? That's right, to support the game companies I like, and support the practice of not having DRM.

The games that most sorely tempt me to pirate them are the DRM-ladden garbage, just so I don't have to deal with it, but I've got such a large game backlog that I don't even bother, I just boycott them outright. Heck I skipped out on Dark Souls on 90% steam sale because I saw it used Games for Windows Live, automatic boycott right there. A missed sale 100% due to DRM.

I am not alone in boycotting the most invasive DRMs, microtransactions, and the like. There's quite a lot of us, and we don't all resort to piracy either.

It also irks many of us that those who pirate certain games have a better user experience because they don't have to put up with the bullshit that us paying customers do.

Piracy is a pretty apt comparison to ad blocking too. Taking something and giving nothing back because of whatever flawed personal justifications you can cook up.

If you think a site has ads that are too intrusive, too annoying, too whatever your criteria is - boycott the site outright. Do not pirate the site and make up some self serving smokescreen about what you deserve to see.

Keep taking what from the tray? And who else am I harming?

"Who am I harming sneaking into a movie theater without paying? The show wasn't sold out and they were gonna show it anyways! I just hate previews, ok? I refuse to pay for any movie with them!"

Firstly, it's not semantic arguing. Maybe you should look up what "semantic" means, because that's not what I'm arguing about.

I wonder if the irony of this statement escaped you, because your attempt to debate the semantics of "semantics" all but proves how much you care about this conversation and what lengths you'll sink to in order to "win" a conversation.

Advertisers are a parasite on the system.

You seriously think advertising is evil. There's no talking rationally with such an individual. I'm done with you. Keep on stealing.

 

[IceForce]

Can you tell us how far up The Escapist's management chain this authorisation of warning for people simply admitting to using ad blockers in this thread went? Who was it that approved the terms of this supposed "armistice"?

we still don't have any answers as to who is responsible for deciding on the forum rules and exceptions for this thread. Even the amendment on the first post is signed with an anonymous "Mods" as the author.

I've only been vaguely following this. Has this question been answered yet?
If not, it's almost like the mods are deliberately avoiding answering it, for some reason.

And where are the mods anyway? I haven't seen any for several pages now.

 

[lacktheknack]

And where are the mods anyway? I haven't seen any for several pages now.

They're pretty much completely done with this thread.

They'll occasionally run back in, poke it with a stick and then flee again.

 

[Cerebrawl]

Piracy is a pretty apt comparison to ad blocking too. Taking something and giving nothing back because of whatever flawed personal justifications you can cook up.

You seriously think advertising is evil. There's no talking rationally with such an individual. I'm done with you. Keep on stealing.

Yeah yeah we're all thieves and pirates if we don't bend over and take it up the ass by every malware, virus, trojan, etc, on the internet, and have our bank accounts drained by some russian mobster whose little browser hijack object ran in an ad distributed by an ad agency like doubleclick. Sure. You keep telling yourself that, enjoy that malware on your high horse.

Meanwhile I'll sit here with my defenses up and a pub club membership, and whatever equivalent other sites have in place, if any, because I'd rather pay directly than compromise my security.

I'm surprised your repeated flagrant rudeness to other users hasn't met with any moderation yet either, as you're wantonly disregarding those forum rules, but then again the mods here do seem to take the part of the ad advocates at every step, because apparently the ad agencies have them whipped really bad.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Piracy is a pretty apt comparison to ad blocking too. Taking something and giving nothing back because of whatever flawed personal justifications you can cook up.

You seriously think advertising is evil. There's no talking rationally with such an individual. I'm done with you. Keep on stealing.

Yeah yeah we're all thieves and pirates if we don't bend over and take it up the ass by every malware, virus, trojan, etc, on the internet, and have our bank accounts drained by some russian mobster whose little browser hijack object ran in an ad distributed by an ad agency like doubleclick. Sure. You keep telling yourself that, enjoy that malware on your high horse.

Do you have any idea how often this occurs? Do share the statistics. I have yet to have this happen. This is a common smokescreen excuse for something that is rarely a danger for someone running an antivirus.

 

[Cerebrawl]

Can you tell us how far up The Escapist's management chain this authorisation of warning for people simply admitting to using ad blockers in this thread went? Who was it that approved the terms of this supposed "armistice"?

we still don't have any answers as to who is responsible for deciding on the forum rules and exceptions for this thread. Even the amendment on the first post is signed with an anonymous "Mods" as the author.

I've only been vaguely following this. Has this question been answered yet?
If not, it's almost like the mods are deliberately avoiding answering it, for some reason.

And where are the mods anyway? I haven't seen any for several pages now.

Someone was warned for a short "I use ad block, who doesn't" post on the previous page, so I guess that rule is still in effect, even if things like not being rude to other users apparently isn't, with certain users here heaping on the abuse and calling everyone thieves and pirates and whatnot.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Can you tell us how far up The Escapist's management chain this authorisation of warning for people simply admitting to using ad blockers in this thread went? Who was it that approved the terms of this supposed "armistice"?

we still don't have any answers as to who is responsible for deciding on the forum rules and exceptions for this thread. Even the amendment on the first post is signed with an anonymous "Mods" as the author.

I've only been vaguely following this. Has this question been answered yet?
If not, it's almost like the mods are deliberately avoiding answering it, for some reason.

And where are the mods anyway? I haven't seen any for several pages now.

Someone was warned for a short "I use ad block, who doesn't" post on the previous page, so I guess that rule is still in effect, even if things like not being rude to other users apparently isn't, with certain users here heaping on the abuse and calling everyone thieves and pirates and whatnot.

If you're uncomfortable with such a term, stop perpetrating that behavior. Because no matter what excuses, rationalizations, or justifications you can make up, that IS what you're doing from an objective view point.

You are depriving a site of revenue. You are actively damaging a site. It's not rude to state this fact.

 

[IceForce]

And where are the mods anyway? I haven't seen any for several pages now.

They're pretty much completely done with this thread.

They'll occasionally run back in, poke it with a stick and then flee again.

I haven't seen Jim either, despite him promising an armistice and sorting that out with the mods, hopefully.

(Granted, it's unrealistic to expect him to read 22 pages of comments, but this particular situation is rather important, I thought.)