Why It's OK to Block Ads (2015)

It's my network. I control what does or does not go through it.

Still true a decade later.

Isn’t ad blocking, as the industry magazine AdAge has called it, “robbery, plain and simple”?

Robbing corporations is based, though, actually.

It's not like these ads have any respect.

I think all ads should be blocked. If billions in funding is going to be put to use it should go towards offsetting environmental impact and developing products that are actually better, instead of just convincing people to settle for a cute jingle

The same reason why it is ok to not eat shit.

Here's why it's okay to block ads in pretty simple terms:

Ads can contain ransomware; that is to say, a seemingly innocent ad can deliver a payload which will run on your computer, lock your files, and demand you pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars anonymously.

Now if you go to the website that served the ad and tell them, "I allowed ads on your site because I support your right to monetise your content, and now I have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars, will you help me pay that" or "will you pay that for me since your site served the ransomware," you know what they will tell you, every single time, without fail? Whether they actually answer you, or more likely, just delete your email. They're telling you that it's your problem. That you should have secured your computer better.

So secure your computer better now. Block all the ads.

Getting a little more technical, use Firefox or a fork of it. Use Linux if you can. Use a Mac if you can't. If you really must use Windows, know how to secure it. I use Windows 11 at work, I'd never use it at home, but I had a talk with the IT guy, and he let me do a few things to it. I know more than he does, but he's the one with the job, so I told him what I'd do before I did it, I did exactly what I said I was going to do, nothing more nothing less, and I still think my home computer is more secure, but I'm a lot less worried about using the work machine. I think it's wild that so many companies just use Windows. I'm not trying to hate on Windows. It's good for gaming and it's accessible. I'd love to see more companies roll their own *nix or just use Macs (which run macOS which is UNIX certified).

living adfree is so great. sometimes it's jarring to hear an ad in the wild, but it's a nice reminder of how much better I'm living

Advertising should be illegal. It should be considered harassment.

If you want people to find your product then we need to log that in a public database site. If you want to find a product go there, nobody ever wants to find a product while driving or watching movies or existing in public.

They’re unnecessary, distracting, some try to track you and others can have malware. No thanks.

Because even US secret services (multiple of them) say so.

It's my computer isn't it? I can discard packets I don't care to receive

no ads in web 1.0 and the internet was perfectly fine

It would be much harder to block ads if they were more like newspapers and just a part of the page you were viewing, instead of imported from a different source.

But in order to do that the site themselves would be responsible for the ads they display instead of blaming their ad service, and they would lose out on all their tracking data.

So fuck em.

"It's my ccomputer" has already been mentioned, but it's my bandwidth and my home network too. Ads can stay off it.

Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.

It arbitrary pollutes any environment it’s conducted in, and causes secondary harms to non-participants by incentivising insecure hoarding of private information with the intent to better target individuals.

Maladvertising and scams just make that a surefire thing, especially since there's a chance that just loading an ad could infect your machine.

And for less tech-savvy family members, it cuts down on the risk of them falling for scams or suchlike.

Ad-blocking is as legal as a lock on the door.

I used ad blocker but I cannot imagine a world without ads. What does discoverablity look like in a world without ads?

I think ads have the same issue as content recommendation algo, that being that they're bad but useful.