Let's make one thing clear from the start: I absolutely despise most advertisements. That's because they tend to be nothing more than cheap manipulation of our more primitive urges to try and get you to buy something you neither want nor need. That said, I can understand ads having a place in supporting "free" content that would otherwise be unavailable, whether that's broadcast TV and radio, or the various websites that support themselves with ads. However, advertisers have taken liberties with their web ads, to the point where the unscrupulous can damage the computers of the people being advertised to. Not surprisingly, tech-savvy end users have worked out ways to interfere with ads, and in some cases have made "ad-blockers" available for the public to download and install without needing that much tech-savvy. Advertisers have taken issue with that (with some validity, since it's their ad dollars that are paying for the content that's being delivered), and have been working with their website developers to find ways to counter those ad-blockers. All very cat-and-mouse, much the same story that plays out in, for example, computer security. However, I've recently run into one tactic that I disagree strongly with.
Some websites have taken it upon themselves to try and detect whether your computer is running an ad-blocker... and if it is, they'll call you out on it, and demand that you turn it off for their website before they will let you see what you've come to see. In theory, that's entirely reasonable, and a suitable answer to the advertiser's concerns... but that's only if they're remarkably good about detecting the presence of ad-blockers.
Me, I don't use an ad-blocker... but I do use a little tool from the Electronic Frontier Foundation called Privacy Badger, whose sole purpose in life is blocking misbehaving advertisers (and their tracking cookies). They're more than welcome to shoot any ads my way, they just don't get to do so with embedded payloads of tracking nastiness to follow me from one website to the next. Mind you, because nobody seems to want to use a "default" ad these days, I rarely see much in the way of ads at all, but, frankly, that's their problem, not mine. At any rate, now I've got some websites (including at least one that I rather enjoyed) demanding that I turn off Privacy Badger for their site... and frankly, if you're a web developer, and you think that's a reasonable request to make, I want nothing to do with your website. So, here's hoping this particular ad fad doesn't gain any more steam... and I hope those websites that maybe lose traffic from this change their minds, and somehow let us know. Maybe with a nice static ad banner somewhere?
Friday, August 17, 2018
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