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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) by Kawumpa on Friday September 18 2015, @07:05AM
You are absolutely right and I guess most people wouldn't have a problem with ads. They don't seem to have a problem when they read a dead tree publication, right? There is a difference however. Here are a couple of things that online ads will do that offline ads don't:
* Play sounds
* Display changing pictures or even movies
* Track your reading habits
* Track your surfing habits, following you across different sites
* Do the preceeding two in a way that you don't see or notice
* Display content on top of what you were reading until you actively dismiss it
All this is so distracting and in part invasive that many people prefer to block all this to read the content they came for. Blockers didn't become a thing until all of the above happened. Few people had a problem with static images or banners or text ads back (basically what you have in offline media) in the 90s if I recall correctly. The race started with pop-up ads (remember those?) and had us blocking JS.
There should be a business model to support quality journalism and the like, but it's not the user's job to figure out what it is. As long as the publishers can't present me with one and instead choose to bombard with blinking and screaming manure I choose to block this whichever way possible or not use their service. Whining also rarely helps, especially not from media outlets that already offer a product that is so bad that there is hardly reason to go there in the first place. Is it maybe because they don't pay journalists enough anymore to do a decent job researching the material they are writing about? I am thinking of the Murdochs, Bertelsmanns, Holtzbrincks and Springers of the world here, who have huge profits but still decide to not really invest in quality and instead use paywalls and/or heavy advertising and other annoyances. Publishers cite the lack of interest in subscription models to justify advertising. I have two points: A subscription model that forces me into a month long (at least) contract and charges what they would charge for the same offline publication is as ridiculous as 1.99$ per article. Especially considering that many of today's newspapers are mostly compiled news agency content without any input from the publication whatsoever. So yes, give me a non-intrusive website with static adverts and I will happily switch off my blocker. Give me a working micropay model and I will pay for content. But most of all, give me content I actually want to read of a quality that justifies paying for it and don't make me the product.