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... or so some web pages are now saying according to an article published by El Reg:
The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post has become the largest newspaper to refuse to serve readers who filter out advertisments.
The Post described it as "a short test" to gauge what users who use blocked blockers will do next. "Often, we run tests like this not in reaction to a problem, but to learn," said the paper in a statement.
Last week, Google also began to nuke the filters used to block preroll ads on its YouTube service. For extra punishment, YouTube viewers using AdBlock Plus had to sit through the full ad, by disabling the 'Skip Ad' button.
Around one in seven surfers use ad-blocking software, although the proportion rises when the demographic mix skews towards middle class and wealthy, and young and male, according to the latest annual PageFair report... into ad filters.
There is a reason why people use ad blockers. Sometimes it's for purposes of sanity, to avoid the very annoying auto-playing ads that more and more web sites now host. Others block them for security purposes, limiting one's exposure to the nastiness that can sometimes come from unscrupulous advertisers. Still others block them to reduce the draw on their precious bandwidth, especially those who get throttled if they use their monthly limit. Perhaps the Washington Post should be more careful with who they sell advertising to and more strictly limit the format of the adverts their sponsors pay them to publish instead of punishing those who block all of them.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @01:15PM
If you guys want to keep participating in an economy while simultaneously forcing yourself out of major aspects of its operation, perceiving yourself to be better than the average user and deserving of special treatment, then go for it.
Those of us who want to live on planet Earth and don't hate our fellow man really don't mind the occasional ad and we are smart enough to realize a few extra Kbps of bandwidth or bits of NSA surveillance don't mean jack sh!@ in the long run.
Pure communist-type bull@#$
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17 2015, @01:18PM
Thank you Herr Hitler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 17 2015, @02:11PM
WTF are you smoking? Where's this "occasional ad"?
I like to look at weather.com now and then. In fact, when I get to work, I load the page, and click the hourly thing. The page loads, and loads, and loads. In the time it takes weather.com to load, I could have downloaded a ten meg file. WTF? Someone is PAYING FOR THAT BANDWIDTH - and it's not the advertisers.
If the advertisers want to use my bandwidth, they need to PAY ME!
WIth ad blockers enabled, the same page loads on the same computer in ten or fifteen seconds. Turn the adblocker off, and it's back up to 1 1/2 minutes.
Occasional ad my ass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2015, @03:17AM
You're using the wrong site; try weather.gov. It's run by the NOAA, funded by your tax dollars, and doesn't have a single ad.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Pino P on Friday September 18 2015, @04:37AM
When weather.com(cast) got out of hand, I switched to weather.gov and never looked back.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 18 2015, @03:04PM
Well - maybe I need to be nominated for a dumbass award or something. I've often visited NOAA weather. I've always just typed NOAA into the address bar, and click one of the links. The page I land on has all the data you would expect, minus the weather map. Well - I took your advice, and put weather.gov in the address bar - thought for a couple seconds, and enabled scripts. Yeah. And, no ads. http://graphical.weather.gov/sectors/shvLoop.php#tabs [weather.gov] I need to explore some more. The only thing I can find right now that looks better on weather.com, is that my weather map is centered on the town I put into the address bar. Here, it centers on Shreveport, and I'm out near the edge of the map. I can probably change that . . .
Thanks, man!