web Should Ad Blockers Be Banned?

[EpicEnergy 22,066]

This is a question I just recently thought of. Ad blockers are used by numerous individuals to prevent annoying ads from popping up. On one side, ad blockers are very useful for those who use them, as they block most ads (maybe all, depending on the ad blocker and the website) and can even prevent scareware from popping up on the user's computer, protecting it from potential harm. On the other side, however, ad blockers are taking away revenue and money from websites that use ads, which could cause much harm to the website, especially if their only source of money is ads. So, should ad blockers be banned?

My answer is no, I don't think ad blockers should be banned. Who would be the one to ban them? It would likely be the government banning them from the country it is in control over, which is one reason to oppose a ban on ad blockers since it would give the government control over what people do on the internet and threaten freedoms on the internet. Another reason is that ad blocker users need ad blockers to stay safe on the internet.

[Evil Pink One 12,954]

illegal ads should be block..... like the ones that make your thing grow. those were lies....

[Splashee 28,537]

17 minutes ago, EpicEnergy said:

...can even prevent scareware from popping up on the user's computer, protecting it from potential harm

You have to have a lot of faith and trust in the things you use on your computer. Using a web browser that allows a banner to attack your own computer is risky, but it is also risky to have an ad blocker that chooses "what is good for you". In the very end, it is your own choice.

A few years back, there were banners that hide from the user that they were using their computer to mine cryptocurrency. That is a form of earning money for the web page using that banner. However, it was extended to earn as much as possible, taking all CPU away from your computer without asking first. Browsers have been updated to stop such behavior since then (hopefully).

Ad blockers are applications, that claim to remove advertising and harmful banners from your internet experience. But they take a lot of CPU power, memory, and so on, to do that. And do they actually know what is an advertisement is, and what is not? They could as easily mining cryptocurrency using your CPU power without you knowing it. Also, I have seen images and other web-elements disappear from sites that weren't advertisement. What if such information was important?

 

It isn't that easy. There is no good or bad here. Just a lot of confusion to the user experience.

[Octavia Heartstrings 28,397]

Absolutely not. I use multiple ad & tracker blockers on my laptop, and it makes the viewing experience on every site I visit so much better and safer.

[Misty Shadow 7,067]

Under no circumstance would I ever advocate for such a thing. My Brave Browser's automatic ad blocker has enhanced my internet browsing experience in a way that makes me NEVER want to go back to using the internet like I once did. Internet users have every right to decide for themselves which websites they want to support by allowing their ads, that is not the government's decision.  

[Props Valroa 25,979]

No way would I ever want that! Ads are only good for being blocked and I think it is a must have to have ad blockers while browsing the internet. 

[Megas 27,052]

Fuck no. Not only are some ads very, very annoying, a lot of them are downright harmful

[Dark Qiviut 22,160]

No way, no how. Internet ads are a complete nuisance, especially the clickbait trash.

[Fluttershutter 2,114]

Hell no. How exactly would they enforce a ban on software people install on their own computers? We have more than way too much of Big Brother already.

[mlploverlizzy 289]

No way i use ad blockers all the time and they are very useful! 

[Fluttershyfan94 5,737]

I believe it comes to what you are doing the occasional ad is fine but I guess youtube for example is way overdoing it. To be fair though websites do rely on advertisements that is true I mean the servers they must run to be able to provide the websites services are massive. Yet that said though it doesn't have to be this many advertisements and as such you're entirely justified to use ad blockers I mean youtube now offers you to pay to forego ads and to me that's like admitting you have way too many ads and instead of making them fewer they demand pay for it. Well guess what you would have watched the ad but now they are so many you have to use ad blocker or pay them. Similar idea I suppose to spotify premium just make the ads so annoying that you'll pay to get rid of them. Well that defeats the purpose of advertising to begin with, first of all you want your ads to reach a certain demographic to essentially sell you or rather interests you in their products and services. This can be and should in fact be mutually beneficial, the website gets revenue and you get interesting offers that will be of interest to you. If you only have ads to annoy people into buying a subscription then your platform for advertising is not working and you should just not do it and find other ways of having people subscribe to your service. 

What I should also add to this as a car enthusiast whose always looking into interesting ideas if you want to sell me a set of tools the best you can do is promote them by influencers. Or if it is some type of upgrade you know looking at cars on instagram and seeing an advertisement of tires or a set of tools or maybe just new type of car related product will always more likely come to the interested buyer if you simply find the right demographic and target audience that isn't some random advertisement on youtube. If you are going to have advertisements and I do know you steal our private data to give us those ads so give us ads that actually interest us so it'll be more like a tiktok video or something along the lines of such.

Edited December 4, 2021 by Fluttershyfan94

[Tacodidra 59,781]

No, I use them myself. Though I understand the effect it might have on site revenue. But I think advertisers have themselves to blame, at least in part – when most ads were just simple banners, I don't remember people complaining about them. But they got more and more annoying, with flashing images, autoplaying sounds, videos, popups covering most of the page...

[Courageous Thunder Dash 7,809]

Certainly not! The thing is, websites and companies are trying so hard for people to disable their ad blocker. There was a time when ad blockers on mobile worked to block ads on the youtube app. Now, the youtube app prevents adblockers from running with special code. If this special code is replicated on more platforms, it could even be the end for ad blockers. 

[Pentium100 2,056]

Without adblocker some sites would pretty much be unusable to me - I really, really hate ads.

 

There was a time, when ads were either a static banner or text. Those were annoying, but acceptable.

Right now, ads track you,, have the potential to contain viruses, can use your CPU to mine cryptocurrency*, can produce sound and some are just distracting. At some point between then and now, ads got bad enough that I started to use adblock. I am not going to stop using it. These days it's adblock and tracking blockers (and noscript for some sites). Oh, and the tracking? Other have told me that it does not really work - they get ads for things they already bought (buy a hard drive - get lots of ads about hard drives). 

 

* that, by itself, is not so bad, as long as the site asked for permission first.

[Splashee 28,537]

My iPad doesn't allow blocking of ads for YouTube, so I am "getting used to ads". I am also "getting used to" being controlled by YouTube just like they said I would (their DISLIKE system).