Using AdBlock violates "social contract"? WTF?

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

From Newsforge.com

AdBlock

In contrast to Google Preview, AdBlock does not add information to Web pages, but removes it. With AdBlock installed you can block images, Flash animations, iframes, scripts, and other Web page elements based on their source address, either as a wildcard or a regular expression.

The power of this approach is obvious. AdBlock can strip ads out of Web content, saving you bandwidth and removing the annoyance of ads appearing midway through content. Since many ads are now served by ad-hosting companies, a few wildcard blocks can significantly reduce the number of ads that you see in the average Web page. AdBlock can also block malicious or inappropriate content, although the openness of the configuration makes this inappropriate for use as anything other than a tool for personal preferences in this respect.

Using AdBlock is simple. Right-click on an ad and select "AdBlock ..." from the context menu. In the dialog box that appears, you can opt to alter the address that will be blocked, introducing wildcards for example to block all content from a given server. Alternatively, click "AdBlock" in your Firefox status panel and select from the list of blockable elements. You can quickly build a comprehensive set of filters using this technique.

If you use this tool, be aware of a sensitive issue. Although you may feel that your enjoyment of some Web sites is marred by the presence of ads, these ads represent a revenue stream for the Web site. If you block ads, there are those who would assert you are not holding up your end of a "social contract" between yourself and the Web site that you are browsing.

What kind of "social contract" this guy mentioned? Oh, so now we're morally obliged to see those disgusting ads?

[namdoolb]

yeah.

look, there are people out there who will suggest you've broken the same kind of "social contract" if you get up to make a cup of tea when the commercials come on.

The way i see it: I don't take any notice of the ads. In fact the annoyance of having to close the popup may actually make me less likely to endorse said product or service.

So if I don't take any notice of the ads, what's the point in me seeing them?

Next they'll try to tell you that you're legally obliged to actually visit the site that the ad comes from whenever it pops up. Fuck that.

If they want me to watch their ads, they've gotta put the effort in. make the ads less obtrusive, more interesting. No-one's fault but their own if people don't want to watch their ads.

[Faram]

To get adblock even better, use this

Adblock custom filter instruktions

Custom blocking

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

look, there are people out there who will suggest you've broken the same kind of "social contract" if you get up to make a cup of tea when the commercials come on.

I wonder what kind of people are they, and how did they come into such corporate-wanking stance like that.

[Gandalf]

look, there are people out there who will suggest you've broken the same kind of "social contract" if you get up to make a cup of tea when the commercials come on.

I wonder what kind of people are they, and how did they come into such corporate-wanking stance like that.

I imagine because the price you pay for watching free to air TV is that you observe the commercials. If you don't, the sponsors have basically wasted some of their money.

[Lagmonster]

From a business perspective, whenever I've been involved in promotional materials for government initiatives, we don't expect to reach more than 5% of our total target audience, but we do it anyway, because it JUST MIGHT hit the big time and pay off.

But honestly, you could count the number of commercials that were so cool that they stayed in the public consciousness for months or years ("where's the beef" and "whaassssup") being the two that immediately spring to mind).

Any business, in other words, that starts an ad campaign expecting - no, demanding that even 50% of viewers see or internalize their ad is living in a fantasy world.

[Praxis]

The advertisers are being overly intrusive, so I don't mind blocking it.

Look at it this way. Nobody (or at least most people) bothers to block a Google ad, right? Why? They're relatively unintrustive, and don't bother you, but if something interesting pops up you click it.

What gets annoying is these massive flashing "CLICK HERE NOW!" advertisements. They have no purpose but to annoy the users. If advertisers would stop being annoying and follow Google, I wouldn't have a problem, but if you make flash movies for advertisements I WILL BLOCK THEM.

I have a friend who is on dialup. The poor guy goes to load a page on IGN to read a game review, and 90% of the load time is loading the flash advertisement...

[General Zod]

the reasoning behind his claims are idiotic. by that logic i shouldn't change the channel or hit the mute button during a commercial because i'm potentially blocking a source of income for a television program.

[Vendetta]

Some web advertisements do, however, pay their host site per view request to the advertisement's server.

If you block your system downloading the advertisement, the host site doesn't get paid.

TV advertisements pay in advance for the advertising slot.

And yes, the media conglomerates already want to stop you fastforwarding past the ads or getting a PVR that auto-excludes them.

[General Zod]

Some web advertisements do, however, pay their host site per view request to the advertisement's server.

If you block your system downloading the advertisement, the host site doesn't get paid.

TV advertisements pay in advance for the advertising slot.

And yes, the media conglomerates already want to stop you fastforwarding past the ads or getting a PVR that auto-excludes them.

if the site has good enough content and i want to support them, i'll let the ad filter through. if not, tough shit. they're not going to force ads down my throat if i don't want them to.

[namdoolb]

the reasoning behind his claims are idiotic. by that logic i shouldn't change the channel or hit the mute button during a commercial because i'm potentially blocking a source of income for a television program.

hey, it's not my actual opinion; I just know there are people out there who think like that.

I just used that point to illustrate the idiocy of the original article, If people want you to watch ads, they should put the effort in to make them interesting, engaging, and unobtusive. Not try to apply non-existent legal muscle to bully you into watching them.

I hate it when statements are taken out of context of the rest of the post. The latter end of the post should have made my stance perfectly clear on this, but instead i'm here restating it so people don't misinterpret it

[General Zod]

the reasoning behind his claims are idiotic. by that logic i shouldn't change the channel or hit the mute button during a commercial because i'm potentially blocking a source of income for a television program.

hey, it's not my actual opinion; I just know there are people out there who think like that.

I just used that point to illustrate the idiocy of the original article, If people want you to watch ads, they should put the effort in to make them interesting, engaging, and unobtusive. Not try to apply non-existent legal muscle to bully you into watching them.

I hate it when statements are taken out of context of the rest of the post. The latter end of the post should have made my stance perfectly clear on this, but instead i'm here restating it so people don't misinterpret it

i was referring to the original article. not your post.

[Chmee]

I do wildcard blocking with Adblocker and the cutdown in ads is very satisfying ...

When I'm testing one of our corporate firewalls at home and utilizing its HTTP Proxy, I can get even more granular in filtering content from adservers.

Social contract my ass ... when did they ever ask my approval to stick in annoying, offensive, insipid advertising?

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Social contract my ass ... when did they ever ask my approval to stick in annoying, offensive, insipid advertising?

I may be a little bit paranoid, but imagine when most websites in the future put something like this:

"This is an ad-supported site. By visiting this site, you're agree to be bound by law to NOT blocking any advertising displayed on this site. Click YES if you're agree. Click NO if you're disagree with our terms of services."

Imagine the future of total corporatism, where internet advertiser is actually protected by law to force any surfer to SEE their disgusting ads.

[Praxis]

View source, find the address it takes you to if you press Yes, copy and paste that into the browser, and bookmark it. Then you never actually pressed Yes.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

View source, find the address it takes you to if you press Yes, copy and paste that into the browser, and bookmark it. Then you never actually pressed Yes.

But the phrase "by visiting this site...."

Then a lawyer will come into your house and drag you to the court room for blocking the site's ad.

Well I may push it too far, but I'm sure corporate vampires would be creative enough to make a better TOS phrase than what I made.

[CDiehl]

I agree with just about everyone here. This "social contract" idea is bullshit. Advertisers only pull this crap with the internet because it is almost practical to make people look at ads on the internet, where it is not so practical in almost every other venue. We ignore, avoid and tune out radio, TV and print ads, and they can't prevent any of that. Basically, they don't want to make an effort to make ads we'd want to see or hear, and want the power to make us look at or listen to whatever they put out. Considering this tantrum, and the fit they had over TiVo and the like, which edit out ads, I'd bet money that if advertisers had the ability, they'd make laws requiring us to observe a certain amount of advertising per day and prove we had done so as a consequence of using the media.

Also, isn't it interesting that they only trot out the "social contract" argument when they want to obligate us to do something for them? Whenever anyone suggests the other side of such a contract, that businesses have an obligation to the public, they bleat that they are private concerns and have no such obligations. I think that both sides of this concept are foolishness, but one cannot have things both ways; one side forcing its wishes on another is not a contract.

[Xon]

View source, find the address it takes you to if you press Yes, copy and paste that into the browser, and bookmark it. Then you never actually pressed Yes.

But the phrase "by visiting this site...."

Then a lawyer will come into your house and drag you to the court room for blocking the site's ad.

Well I may push it too far, but I'm sure corporate vampires would be creative enough to make a better TOS phrase than what I made.

Doesnt matter. You never agreed or disagreed to the TOS.

[Spacebeard]

. Advertisers only pull this crap with the internet because it is almost practical to make people look at ads on the internet, where it is not so practical in almost every other venue. We ignore, avoid and tune out radio, TV and print ads, and they can't prevent any of that.

The reverse is also true: the Web is inherently a pull content delivery system, meaning that you only receive data that you specifically request, and as we all know firsthand, computers can be programmed not to request advertisements. We can't so easily filter out billboards, print advertisements, or radio spots. With filtering systems available for pull systems, and spreading to many push systems as well (spam filters for email, Federal Do Not Call list for the telephone, TiVo for the television), it will soon no longer be a viable business model to force people to receive unwanted information via these media. Of course, that means it will also not be viable to operate a website or television station paid for solely by advertising revenue, so if annoying ad campaigns go the way of the dodo, they will only be replaced by equally annoying subscription systems or fundraising drives.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Considering this tantrum, and the fit they had over TiVo and the like, which edit out ads, I'd bet money that if advertisers had the ability, they'd make laws requiring us to observe a certain amount of advertising per day and prove we had done so as a consequence of using the media.

I just wonder; how much is the possibility for this corporate-wanking law to be actually written? Well at least for the internet, because it seems lawmakers are cocksucking corporate/marketing vampires while pissing on individual user/consumer when it goes to computer/internet stuff. An example is (you) Can Spam Act.

Anti-spam activists greeted the new law with dismay and disappointment. Internet activists who work to stop spam stated that the Act would not prevent any spam -- in fact, it appeared to give Federal approval to the practice, and it was feared that spam would increase as a result of the law. The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email stated:

"This legislation fails the most fundamental test of any anti-spam law, in that it neglects to actually tell any marketers not to spam. Instead, it gives each marketer in the United States one free shot at each consumer's e-mail inbox, and will force companies to continue to deploy costly and disruptive anti-spam technologies to block advertising messages from reaching their employees on company time and using company resources. It also fails to learn from the experiences of the states and other countries that have tried "opt-out" legal frameworks, where marketers must be asked to stop, to no avail.

[Coalition]

Most ads, that stay within the borders, I don't mind. Now when the ad starts doing pop-ups o pop-unders, extra sounds, or pops up a graphic that stays over the article I am reading, that is when I click on it repeatedly, to drive their advertising budget up.

Not too sure how effective that is though.

[Stormin]

that is when I click on it repeatedly, to drive their advertising budget up.

Not too sure how effective that is though.

That is probably the opposite of what works. The ad is already saved onto your comp so you are not sucking any more bandwidth and it is sending to the company that the ad is being clicked on, meaning they may think it is more effective than it really is.

[Sam Or I]

Hmmm... I see this as going into a store? I do not have to look down every row of goods. I am not socially bound to. Thats why it is called "browsing" to begin with.

[Vertigo1]

They can take their socal contract and shove it right up their ass. I block any and all advertisements I run across. Google ads included, with the exception of the ones in gmail because they're not even visible when reading mail. (that, and if you block them you block all of gmail). I despise advertisements, and make every effort to get rid of them.

[phongn]

If advertisement revenue goes down due to a proliferation of ad-blocking systems then free web services will die alongside of them. I don't like advertisements either but they're what permit most websites sans corporate sponsor to survive.