It's not a "tragedy of the commons", it's the failure of private businesses to monetise their operations without pissing people off so much they go and install special software to avoid it.
By using adblock, you're abusing trust. You're assuming the website you visit is going to be intrusive and horrible to you. You're putting your fingers in your ears and saying "Nothing you ever say to me is going to be useful to me". It's anti-social, and if everyone did it, it'd be a horrible world.
Imagine if you did that on a personal level - if someone started talking to you about a new movie they saw that they liked, and you instantly cover your ears so you can't hear them.
Nonsense! What trust? You put up a website, I visit it. If your whole operation is based upon the "trust" that I'm also going to view your ads - you've got another think coming.
Anyway, I see it from the opposite angle. It was websites abusing my trust - that I would be able to view their content without being subjected to inane, distracting ads - that led me to this attitude in the first place. Adblock users were created, not born.
"You're assuming the website you visit is going to be intrusive and horrible to you."
This is an assumption born of long and miserable experience and I stand by its general accuracy. 75% rule!
"You're putting your fingers in your ears and saying "Nothing you ever say to me is going to be useful to me"."
If I knew someone IRL who spoke with the same abysmal signal-to-noise ratio of your average web advertising, that is exactly what I'd do. Or, rather, I'd wear some kind of filter so I couldn't hear them.
You are constantly defending advertising in this forum - I have to wonder, are we using the same internet? 99.9% of the ads I see are awful. Punch the monkey. Win a PS3! Get your horoscope on your mobile! Repair your Windows registry! They are pure annoying noise. How can you possibly blame me for wanting to block them out?
I have nothing against site owners; hell, I'm a site owner myself. If there was a more surgical way to easily block only the annoying ads, I'd adopt that. There is not, to my knowledge, so I block them all. I don't understand why you can't see that this is a perfectly reasonable reaction.
Yes I think you're browsing a completely different internet. I rarely get irritated by adverts and find most of them interesting and useful. If not personally, definitely from a marketing and monetization point of view.
> If I knew someone IRL who spoke with the same abysmal signal-to-noise ratio of your average web advertising, that is exactly what I'd do. Or, rather, I'd wear some kind of filter so I couldn't hear them.
More likely that you would avoid the person all together. Do the same for websites and everyone is happy.
What does this have to do with advertising? Since when is advertsing equated with speech? The type of advertising blocked by Adblock is a form of unsolicited communication.
Your analogy is a terrible one, by the way. A better one is picking up an ad-supported magazine, and asking a helpful friend (one whose judgement you trust - the parallel here being to the EasyList maintainers) to rip all the ads out for you before you read it.
If people could block ads on TV and in print, prevent themselves from seeing billboards, etc, newsflash: they would! If I could go through my life without being subjected to people trying to sell me stuff all the time, I would be a much happier person.
Just because we grew up in a world dominated by consumerism does not mean that's the way it should be, or the only way it can be. If more people were proactive in refusing to be marketed to I believe the benefits would be positive for all of society.
No. They wouldn't. Guess how I know what films are out at the moment. I look at billboards. I see adverts. They tell me useful stuff.
You're a tiny tiny minority.
>> "Just because we grew up in a world dominated by consumerism does not mean that's the way it should be, or the only way it can be. If more people were proactive in refusing to be marketed to I believe the benefits would be positive for all of society."
You seem to be under the delusion that marketing is a bad thing. It's providing useful information to potential consumers. It works. People like it. It's not going away.
Then, axod, you shouldn't have any problem with those of us who like to block ads. You get to do what you want (not block them), and we can do what we want. We should have no argument.
I don't have a problem with you blocking ads, but I don't understand why you want to. In the same way I can't understand people who think consumerism is bad.
Just don't come running to me when you can no longer visit most websites since they've blocked you.
I started blocking ads when certain sites would bog down my browser with flash (namely, Entrepreneur.com). That's when I discovered ABP. It's just a nicer surfing experience for me without them. But then again, I'm the kind of person that thinks Nike is crazy if they expect me to pay for a t-shirt that simply says "Nike" on it (or carries their swoosh).
Just between you and me (I doubt anybody else is reading any more) I get annoyed at movie previews for the same reason...:) I think I'm the only one on the planet with that particular defective gene.
I love the movie previews in cinemas. Nice to see trailers of what's coming out soon.
What I absolutely hate is adverts in cinemas, and the previews/non skip items on DVDs. To subject people to advertising like that when they have already paid is indefensible.
> What does this have to do with advertising? Since when is advertsing equated with speech? The type of advertising blocked by Adblock is a form of unsolicited communication.
You solicited it with your visit to the site. You didn't leave when confronted with the choice of using my site and viewing ads or leaving. If you don't like my ads, by all means: LEAVE.
Actually, I made an HTTP request to the main page, and then selectively loaded the rest of the page. How can you possibly argue that it's somehow my moral responsibility to load a web page in it's entirety? It's a patently ridiculous notion, and if your business model cannot support people that do it you're fucked.
> Actually, I made an HTTP request to the main page, and then selectively loaded the rest of the page. How can you possibly argue that it's somehow my moral responsibility to load a web page in it's entirety?
You're not doing this by hand. The selectively loading argument is patently absurd. You're altering the standard behaviour of your web browser with the strict intention of denying a site owner their revenue source. You're using something without paying for it.
> and if your business model cannot support people that do it you're fucked.
This is not about my business model. My business model can support it fine, partly because there's so few people like you.
No, this is about morally corrupt people that need a lesson in civility.
You solicited my visit by putting your website on the internet and leading me there by some means. Now I'm going to view it on my own terms. If you don't like that, block me, or take down your site.
Sure. And if I'd opened a store and invited customers in, I was also inviting shop lifters. You know, because I solicited them by opening a store and leading them in by some means, so now they should use the store on their own terms.
I invited genuine customers of course, not leeches.
