Adblock or Adblock Plus?

[DoubleY]

Unfortunately you seem unable to enter a mature discussion or comprehend rational thought. Which is probably why you think that AdSense is the only source of income available. Perhaps you missed the most recent WAN show, and didn't hear the guest talking about his Tech Show and how it's fully funded by community donations? Perhaps alternative business models simply don't compute for you? Perhaps you feel that unless google is taking a cut, there's really no point in making money?

Good for him. He also doesn't PAY a co-host to be there. He doesn't have a $2000 camera 

[elkenrod]

You are essentially stealing Linus's money. In my opinion at least 

So if you visit an open website, you have to pay them to view it?  I don't think we want to live in that world.

 

The paradigm is just broken. 

 

What if a post forum got revenue based on the number of registered users?  That happens right?  Would it be wrong to view a forum without registering an account first?

What if a graphics card review is spread over 10 pages and the website gets paid based on clicks.  Would it be wrong to skip straight to the conclusion and not view all of individual benchmark pages.

What if a weekly video podcast has a sponsor segment at the beginning and middle of the video.  Would it be wrong to turn the volume down during those segments?  What if I clicked on the time stamp just after the sponsor segment?

[DoubleY]

So if you visit an open website, you have to pay them to view it?  I don't think we want to live in that world.

 

The paradigm is just broken. 

 

What if a post forum got revenue based on the number of registered users?  That happens right?  Would it be wrong to view a forum without registering an account first?

What if a graphics card review is spread over 10 pages and the website gets paid based on clicks.  Would it be wrong to skip straight to the conclusion and not view all of individual benchmark pages.

What if a weekly video podcast has a sponsor segment at the beginning and middle of the video.  Would it be wrong to turn the volume down during those segments?  What if I clicked on the time stamp just after the sponsor segment?

You are giving me cancer. I don't even want to respond my head hurts so much.

[AlwaysFSX]

Did everyone forget about Ad Block Plus buying or getting paid for ads (Whichever it was) and then substituting them? Fuck them for that. I just use plain Ad Block because it works.

[Murdoch]

Good for him. He also doesn't PAY a co-host to be there. He doesn't have a $2000 camera 

 

My point was there are other sources of income that can be used to replace or supplement ad revenue. It's not as simple as Ads or nothing.

 

Getting into a debate about running costs, and who has to pay how much for what, is besides the point.

 

 

[JupiteL]

Sometimes the ads are just popped every time I click links, that's when I block the site.

[Jvagle875]

cgpgrey just talked about this on his latest podcast (#5): http://www.hellointernet.fm/ 

 

While yes, adblock as a whole hurts content creators to an extent. But each individual adblock is pretty negligible. 

 

I use adblock and will whitelist those creators that I support or use their information frequently. There are certain sites that I don't want to support that I don't whitelist. I don't see it being much different than skipping the commercials on a dvr program.

[FlamingDefibs]

I take issue with any user on this site that asserts, "if you use some type of ad block utility, then you are a lesser person".  It's arrogant, hypocritical, and flat out inaccurate. 

No one on the internet has the obligation to view content they deem "irrelevant" to them in order to get to the content they would like to view/consume.  Exercising that choice makes them no less "good" than any other user.

 

Thank you.

[Unknown_Guy]

The topic of AdBlock always seem to start long debates of morality and philosophy.

That remind me of conference about UX in e-commerce. Basically they wan't to exploit you to buy something that you don't really want. Same with ads - they pretty much mess with your mind to make you buy one brand over another.

 

This is bit lol in case of LTT as some review could basically say this product is waste of your money but ad besides that review would make you buy it next day over better thing anyway

 

Oh man, I was in speech training or something like that - it's almost the same as e-commerce, you get trained to force your opinion in conversation. It's all based on psychology - you think it's your free will. But the truth is you are being manipulated from every direction.

 

Not yet paranoid? NSA is watching you

[Ilumic]

Ad block plus is the best ;D just remember to add this site to the whitelist  

[TheWall]

As many others have said, i only use adblock on sites with really annoying ads, like, i shouldn't have to work so hard to find the real download button. Of course i don't use adblock on this site

[EclipseSkye]

Adblock plus for me.

[PeskyEscky]

I use Adblock at work (but dont use LTT there obviously!).. I do whitelist certain websites I use.

At home I use my phone mostly, so most ads dont make it to mobile version anyway.

[Scottonpc]

Adblock Plus is great

[AMD Lover]

Adblock but just make sure to mark Linus Tech Tips domain as trusted and unblocked.

[Intervalence]

Ad block plus, it doesn't record search history like ad block does.

[neon]

I put both on my moms computer. Im all of supporting providers and such, but the free download pages that say "download" in 4 different ads, she cant tell them apart. installing spamware on a computer is no way to earn business. That and for certain websites that post pretty much flat out porn for ads, that's not cool. 

 

This, whereas most of us on this site are savvy enough to know what is what on the internet, the vast majority of people and the parents out there simply do not, advertisers take advantage of that vulnerability and exploit it, which is extremely unmoral in my book, hence an adblock for people like them is a necessity just for them to be safe.

 

The reason that adblockers even exist is that advertisers and sites have made a mockery of the system, first it was popups, so many popups, then pop-unders, flashing, sounding, can't find the 'x' pop-unders.

 

My main concern on all internet use is to be safe and secure for that to happen adblocks and noscripts are simply a requirement in this day and age to supplement antimalware and on the desktop there is no way I would not use them.

 

In the past this will have impacted sites I genuinely care about but it was a case of once burned twice shy, they have made a mockery (even the genuine sites that should know better) so I have banned them all and I am very unsympathetic about it.

I must add, this would only have ever affected page view ads, I have never intentionally clicked on a advert on the internet ever, they have never ever shown anything I have cared about (for example I see and advert for some server management software and a PSU database search both look very suspicious and I would not click either of them) and I am very proud to say that I do not get influenced by adverts if I want something I do some subjective research and buy the one I then consider best, not what some advertiser tells me what is best, because they are very objective aren't they?

 

However I do the majority of my 'actual things I care about' surfing on my tablet nowadays where I do not block ads because importantly internet surfing on Android or iOS is generally much much safer than on Windows and I use 'apps' for almost everything which tend to be adverts done right, but I am increasingly becoming more concerned on the 'your android has a virus' page infos that seemingly OK sites are allowing to happen.

 

Someone mentioned that Adblock Plus is paid to allow the 'non intrusive adverts' in my opinion after the 20-30 years that advertisers and the sites they have been on have maliciously infected sites with obtuse adverts, then being forced to pay to display acceptable adverts on sites is aOK, perhaps if they hadn't been so greedy in the first place then they wouldn't even be in this position, and people would have zero reason to block adverts.

[Lohocla]

I'm a web developer and unfortunately, due to getting infected by banner adverts, I've resorted to using AB+.  The last three malware infections I had came from banners (not the banner itself obviously, but the code to display it).  

 

The first time I wasn't downloading anything at the time, hadn't installed anything for a while, and I was browsing CNN.  Next thing I knew I was dealing with one of the more nasty versions that installs a rootkit and moves all your files from your desktop to another location.    The last one i got last week was the same, but from a different site that I disabled AB+ on. While browsing, the browser flickered right after a page refresh and boom, got hit again.  

 

Now it's always on, regardless of the site.  

[Laurysss]

So how does watching an add get somebody else money? If you click on it? Well i never click on adds so i keep adblock always on.

[IdeaStormer]

Well first off not only are the Ad-Blocking Add-Ons a ghod-send but don't forget NoScript! WIth those two my monitor has more vertical white space bordering any site than it ever has!

 

Ad-Blocking Add-Ons and such tools are also environmentally GREEN! Less for your graphics card to display and your CPU to process means saved energy keeping the world, well Green and then you laptop users, your battery will last even longer with Ad-Blockers and such tools, don't you want your battery to last longer so you don't have to recharge after an hour of BS flash ads that keep spinning even if you are past it?

 

As for content providers, on this forum the forum members are the content providers, if you removed all the posts by the members the LTT (company/employee) posts would maybe reach 5K or so, and I'm not counting the redundant YouTube links to LTT. So for this one site its our content so where's our $0.01 per read of our posts? Yea, not happening so that means every $0.01 ad I block counts for every $0.01 ad I don't get content provider fee for. Break even baby, I can live with that, but maybe others can't, so close the forum then if you can't muster that.

[Pomfinator]

I use regular AdBlock, the Plus guys are selling out real bad, they basically pay companies to sometimes tell you that regular Adblock is not compatible with their website and direct you to AdBlock Plus.

[Opcode]

Neither, why? Because Disconnect is just all around better. On top of that it's completely open source so you're not running code in your browser that you don't even know what it does. I've used Adblock in the past and it's pretty clunky at being slow and destroying web pages. Disconnect has been literally a god send ever since I've been using it (this topic alone loaded 20% faster with it).

 

Note: Disconnect isn't an ad blocker, tho it does remove quite a few of them that are designed for collecting data.

[fringie]

Neither, why? Because Disconnect is just all around better. On top of that it's completely open source so you're not running code in your browser that you don't even know what it does. I've used Adblock in the past and it's pretty clunky at being slow and destroying web pages. Disconnect has been literally a god send ever since I've been using it (this topic alone loaded 20% faster with it).

 

Note: Disconnect isn't an ad blocker, tho it does remove quite a few of them that are designed for collecting data.

Thanks for that, just added disconnect to chrome.

[STRMfrmXMN]

I recently installed Adblock Plus and disabled it for all of my bookmarks (except Yahoo Answers because Yahoo is a complete asshole through-and-through). I use HTML5 player for Youtube when I see a 30 second un-skip-able ad that I don't want to get through (click on the button, ads can't play because they're in Flash and not HTML). 

 

I have argued against Adblock in the past and I still do, but there are sites that I legitimately cannot use with their ads AHEMForbes.

[STRMfrmXMN]

So how does watching an ad get somebody else money? If you click on it? Well i never click on adds so i keep adblock always on.

If you see the ad then the person running the site/creating the content gets paid, NOT if you click on it. Do you know how many viruses a person would get by clicking on damn near ANY ad on sites like Softpedia or Forbes?

 

That said, I can see Adblock on a family PC where the kids click on random sh*t or on granny's PC for the same-ish reason. But an educated computer user should try to refrain from using Adblock. I use it but whitelist plenty of sites because those sites I support.