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Turn the tide, join the revolution.
One scene from the original Star Wars that always makes me laugh is that one where Han Solo and Chewbacca are chasing the Stormtroopers down the corridors of the Death Star. The Stormtroopers run into a larger group of Stormtroopers, who in turn chase Han and Chewie back the way they came. And I can't think of a better scene to compare the current state of advertising on the Internet to. Because for years, more and more ads have popped up on the Net. They've gotten more and more annoying, from simple pictures, to animated ones, to flashing red-and-white banners, to the more interactive ones which dare you to shoot the annoying subjects of the pictures. And for years, consumers have asked for ways to "opt-out" of these invasive ads, but the advertisers have just laughed at us, all the way to the bank, because as the Internet exploded in popularity, they've found a way to exploit it to make money, at the expense of the sanity of the millions of people surfing the Net. And for years, we've either just accepted that ads are a part of the Net, like commercials on TV, though most of us have at one point complained, and some tried to fight it. The advertisers have finally pushed too far, and now they've found an uprising, and they're running scared, even crying on some web sites, begging us to let them make money off of us again.
Now I bet you're curious to hear what finally turned the tide. Surely you've heard of the revolutionary new web browser, Mozilla Firefox. You may have heard that it has tabbed browsing for a smoother browsing experience, better standards compliance for a cleaner experience, and popup/spyware blocking for a safer experience. But you may or may not have heard that you can also add features, by way of what are known as "extensions", from Mozilla's site as you like, for a more personalized experience. And one extension which is making waves, is known as Adblock.
By itself, Adblock isn't really an ad blocker. It's a selective image blocker. If I'm on a message board, and so-and-so's signature really offends me, or it's too big, or for whatever reason, I don't like it, I can right-click it, choose Adblock Image, and then OK on the screen that pops up showing the URL to the image. On subsequent page loads, Firefox will not even call the image from its host. This has the added side effect of saving the host bandwidth, so if it's a large image, and this person is paying by the megabyte or gigabyte, you're actually doing the host's owner a favor. (But with image hosting services such as ImageShack, this is no longer an issue.) And as you see ads, you can right click them, choose Adblock Image, and they're gone. For Flash-based ads, which as you may know, when you right click them, you get a totally different, Firefox independent context menu, an "Adblock" "tab" appears above them; clicking this has the same effect, and you can block Flash objects as well.
But it isn't Adblock alone that has the advertising industry crying uncle. They could care less if 100% of web surfers used Firefox equipped with Adblock, because even with Adblock, you still have to block each ad you see, so you'll see it at least once, and overall, that's still pretty good for them. And they're hoping that sloppy blocking will cause people to break their browsing experience by blocking too much, by blocking something essential, and thus remove Adblock, if not switch back to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which is and has been for the past ten years, for the most part advertiser-friendly. (Can you imagine... two or more profitable companies working together to make more profit? In this day and age? In a Capitalist society? You betcha.) And then, you're back at square one.
It's a filter that makes Adblock really cool, and it's a filtered Adblock that has advertisers scared out of their minds. Because it is wholly possible to install Windows on a new computer, get connected to the Internet, install Firefox from a CD or network resource, connect to the Mozilla site, get Adblock, get a filter, and begin surfing the Internet, ad-free, having never loaded an ad on that machine. It's like your kid getting beat up by bullies for his lunch money, so you get him a debit card, and since the bullies don't know the PIN number, and your kid isn't telling them, they have no way of exploiting your kid for extra money, so it really throws them for a loop. What will they do? Might they have to actually work for their money like the rest of us? Because in a free-market society like what we have, what advertisers are doing isn't illegal. It's dishonest, it surely isn't nice, but they've found a way to make money without taking anything of considerable value. We don't really have an established value on what's called "screen real estate" (things taking up space on your screen) or bandwidth. In sue-happy America, people don't pay for ISP bandwidth; stuff like that happens in the UK, in Australia, and other countries, but most if not all Americans pay a flat rate for their Internet (as opposed to paying a small fee for each megabyte sent and received) so of course they won't be sued, and in any case, most ads are optimized for size - so they load quicker. There are a few Adblock filters around the Net, but I just use Filterset.G provided by Pierceive. I've only seen a couple things it doesn't catch, and it's nothing I mind. Furthermore, there is another Firefox extension called the Filterset.G Updater, which when combined with Adblock, will keep your Adblock filters up-to-date.
Quick links: Get Firefox | Get Adblock | Filterset.G Homepage | Get Filterset.G Updater
So what's the catch? Of course there's a catch. While it's free, easy, and legal to block every ad on the Net (so what's the problem, eh?), there are a couple things you should know. Some sites are supported by advertising; that is, the site owners depend on the revenue from the ads to run their site. With Firefox only taking up a 14-15% market share, while Internet Explorer hogs the rest, this problem is only theoretical at this point as over 90%, maybe 95%, of web surfers, are not blocking ads. (Not all Firefox users have Adblock and a good filter.) But every day, more and more people are using Firefox, discovering Adblock, and learning about filters. After all, you're reading this.
Now personally, I think most sites can be paid out of pocket. I run a message board, and it costs $10 a month, and every year I have to pay $10 to renew the domain name (darkrealitymb.com). That ain't bad; most people pay more to play Final Fantasy XI or World of Warcraft. So if I, a regular working-class Joe, can afford to run a website, just about anyone with a computer and a debit or credit card can. It's not that much. My site isn't very big, but then I'm also paying a bit more for hosting than I should be, were it just hosting; I'm also getting a leased license to use the very best message board software, Invision Power Board. I could buy it outright for about $200, then be free to pursue much cheaper hosting options, but I haven't got the $200. Or I could use the free phpBB platform... but I really like Invision, and the costs don't bother me at this point. Anyway, my point is, if I can run a message board using the best software, and I work in a factory, who out there cannot? And if you have a larger site, surely you have a larger community, people willing to pay to be a part of a significantly well known site on the Net. So as sites get bigger, costs get bigger, but you're paying for a bigger piece of real estate on the Net. Enter advertisers; for each view of an ad, you get a penny or two, and for each click, you get a couple more. Sounds like chump change, but if you're getting thousands of visitors, advertising can quickly pay some or all of a large site's hosting, and maybe even buy the webmasters lunch once in a while. (Smaller sites aren't eligible for advertising to begin with, not enough viewers.)
So where's the problem? You use Adblock, you use a good filter, and maybe 5-10% of your favorite site's advertising revenue is eaten up. I think most people who work for a living can at least afford to run a site, unless it's something large, hosting large files - for example it has several game demos. But sites like these are usually if not always corporate-backed. nVidia, the world's leader in graphics acceleration cards (to let you play high-end games on your PC), has several game demos on their site, but they also sell PC cards for hundreds of dollars. They're making plenty of money, so they can run a site. Far as I know, the nVidia site doesn't have ads, except for nVidia products, and that doesn't count (as advertising revenue, anyway). The hypothetical problem is that if Adblock and filters get big, advertisers will pay less for views and clicks, there will in fact be fewer views and clicks, and fewer working folks will run web sites, and all the information online will be controlled by corporations. That's the idea, anyway.
Personally, I don't think it's anything to worry about. I highly doubt the Wikipedia is going anywhere, and that's probably the best source for information, period. (Being an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, controversial pages like Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush are going to get edited every day, every now and then by some fanatic who loves or hates them and puts a heck of a bias on the information. But first, people who do too much damage can be blocked, and second, pages with controversial surroundings are tagged as such, and it's possible to roll back all the changes made, see prior versions of each page.) There are free board hosts, such as Invisionfree, who offer free, albeit ad-supported, message boards, running the old, once-free version of Invision Power Board. And there will always be the free web page providers, such as Yahoo's Geocities.
But back to the chase and chase reversal. Where is this actually going to go? Ten years ago, when the Net was first starting to catch on with consumers, ads were simple, just a banner at the top, occasionally at the bottom, of pages. As time went on, they got greedier, spreading ads throughout the page, then the animated ads, the popups, the popunders, and most recently, software classified as "Adware", which makes popups appear at random intervals, or "Spyware", which tracks your browsing habits, digs up your contact information, and sends it back to the host, to be compiled and sold to spammers and telemarketers. So the advertisers have really been pushing, to milk the Net for all it's worth. Now that people who are tired of it are fighting back with Adblock and a filter such as Filterset.G, advertisers are going to have to take a step back. They're going to have to end their assault on the Net unless they want to be completely wiped out, and they're going to have to reach a compromise which will allow them to continue to profit, yet not bother those of us who, for the last bloody time, do not want their junk.
Google, that web behemoth, has already taken one step. The Google Adsense ads, also known as "Ads by Gooooogle", are not intrusive at all. Though some are colored, they're text-based, and coupled with Google's search technology, to make them relevant to what you're reading. I see them in Google's email service, Gmail, and it's uncanny how close they are to the context of what I'm reading. (No, Google doesn't read Gmail members' mail, the process is completely automated.) Google are even, it seems, paying ad-supported sites, $1 for every user who clicks through their ad to download Firefox. How's that for a peace offering? But Google isn't the only advertiser on the Net, and certainly not the biggest. Surely, more compromises are going to have to be made.
Advertisers have a heck of an opportunity in 2006 to change their ways. It may not happen, and they may have to fall a little farther before they realize they're going to have to compromise, but as I say, they have a chance. This time next year, Microsoft is expected to ship Windows Vista, the sucessor to Windows XP, after 5 years of Windows XP. One important part of Vista will be Internet Explorer 7, which borrows a couple key features from Firefox: tabbed browsing and the search box. Really, current beta builds of MSIE 7 look like a stripped-down Firefox. But MSIE 7 will not support extensions, of course, so don't expect Adblock for MSIE any time soon. But because the hardcore geeks using Firefox are also going to want first shot at Vista, and a chance to check out MSIE 7 (we're at least curious) so more than likely, this time next year, Firefox usage will dip a little as people swarm to MSIE 7. For the advertisers, that means more views and more clicks that quarter.
My suggestion is simple: Why not have ads that support Adblock themselves, browser independent? All they have to do is place a link under the ad saying "I don't want to see this ad" and this would place a cookie on the user's computer. Seeing that cookie, the site would hide the ad. Clicking more "I don't want to see this ad" link would add to the cookie file, allowing the user to block multiple ads. Going to an advertising company's web page, you could possibly "apply" to block all their ads... that is, you read a little paragraph that basically says "I don't like looking at ads, please opt me out of your ads" and hitting OK below that would inflate the cookie to block all ads from that advertiser. Because the thing is, there are people who don't want to buy stuff online, regardless. There are people who will not buy anything that's pushed on them. Harassing them is just going to make them want to use Firefox and Adblock and a filter, and block everything, and surely advertisers would rather they block individual ads than all of them. Plus, it might make them look a little more honest. Consumers don't want to do business with those who would harass us - look at how we feel about used car salesmen! But if we start seeing ads that will remove themselves with a click and stay gone, it makes the advertisers look a heck of a lot better, and will probably bring in more clicks.
For our part, there is a second Adblock. It's called Adblock Plus, and the major Plus about it is its whitelist. Furthermore, Filterset.G has a whitelist, so if you decide to compromise, you can still use Filterset.G, and you can whitelist sites. That is, if you know of a site that really helps you out, and you feel uncomfortable taking away their advertising revenue, and/or you know their ads are unintrusive, you can whitelist them, simply by putting @@ before their URL. For example, if you wanted to whitelist this board, you'd add @@invisionpower.com. I have a couple of sites whitelisted - yes, I use Adblock Plus. In debating the issues of ads versus blocking ads, I came to realize that a site which is important to me relies on advertising revenue, and I realized that I didn't want to hurt them, that putting up with the Paypal link in the corner and a banner across the top was a small price to pay to ensure they remained online and in business.
Because at the end of the day, advertisers are only paying the sites that push their ads. They aren't helping you with the cost of your computer. They're not paying for your Internet access. They're not paying you for the space they take up on your screen. Twenty years ago, our computers were really our own. They only did what we wanted them to, they worked for us. Now there are people who have found a way to make millions of computers on the Net, work for them, at many times, against their owners. This isn't right, but it's also not entirely illegal. Lawmakers are going after spammers and spyware authors, but too few, too late. People, the masses of people on the Net, need to rethink their computer, reimagine it as their own, and understand that anything on their screen, on their hard disk, is only there at their invitation, as their guest, as it were, and if they're unwanted, you should be able to remove it. Until these advertisers offer to give you a PC, or pay for your Internet access, they have no "right" to post ads all over your screen. As of now, consider yourself educated. You've been given the facts, albeit slightly biased, but both sides have been given. You have access to the tools needed to make the choice to opt-out of every ad on the Net, or selectively. By doing nothing, either by sticking with Internet Explorer, or by using Firefox without Adblock, or having Adblock without a filter, you are now making the choice to opt-in to these advertisements, and they are there at your invitation, given that you now have the knowledge and the tools to remove them. (If you're on a work computer, you probably can't change what you use - best you can do is convince IT that Firefox is a better choice. But if you're on a work computer, it's not your computer anyway, it's work's computer. Or if it's your parents' computer, it's not yours, it's theirs, and in both cases, all you can do is educate the computer's owner.)
To close, I am not trying to convince everyone to go blocking ads. My message is simple, and it's this: If you don't want to see ads, you no longer have to.
Yes, I wrote this. I didn't copy it from another site or Blog.
One scene from the original Star Wars that always makes me laugh is that one where Han Solo and Chewbacca are chasing the Stormtroopers down the corridors of the Death Star. The Stormtroopers run into a larger group of Stormtroopers, who in turn chase Han and Chewie back the way they came. And I can't think of a better scene to compare the current state of advertising on the Internet to. Because for years, more and more ads have popped up on the Net. They've gotten more and more annoying, from simple pictures, to animated ones, to flashing red-and-white banners, to the more interactive ones which dare you to shoot the annoying subjects of the pictures. And for years, consumers have asked for ways to "opt-out" of these invasive ads, but the advertisers have just laughed at us, all the way to the bank, because as the Internet exploded in popularity, they've found a way to exploit it to make money, at the expense of the sanity of the millions of people surfing the Net. And for years, we've either just accepted that ads are a part of the Net, like commercials on TV, though most of us have at one point complained, and some tried to fight it. The advertisers have finally pushed too far, and now they've found an uprising, and they're running scared, even crying on some web sites, begging us to let them make money off of us again.
Now I bet you're curious to hear what finally turned the tide. Surely you've heard of the revolutionary new web browser, Mozilla Firefox. You may have heard that it has tabbed browsing for a smoother browsing experience, better standards compliance for a cleaner experience, and popup/spyware blocking for a safer experience. But you may or may not have heard that you can also add features, by way of what are known as "extensions", from Mozilla's site as you like, for a more personalized experience. And one extension which is making waves, is known as Adblock.
By itself, Adblock isn't really an ad blocker. It's a selective image blocker. If I'm on a message board, and so-and-so's signature really offends me, or it's too big, or for whatever reason, I don't like it, I can right-click it, choose Adblock Image, and then OK on the screen that pops up showing the URL to the image. On subsequent page loads, Firefox will not even call the image from its host. This has the added side effect of saving the host bandwidth, so if it's a large image, and this person is paying by the megabyte or gigabyte, you're actually doing the host's owner a favor. (But with image hosting services such as ImageShack, this is no longer an issue.) And as you see ads, you can right click them, choose Adblock Image, and they're gone. For Flash-based ads, which as you may know, when you right click them, you get a totally different, Firefox independent context menu, an "Adblock" "tab" appears above them; clicking this has the same effect, and you can block Flash objects as well.
But it isn't Adblock alone that has the advertising industry crying uncle. They could care less if 100% of web surfers used Firefox equipped with Adblock, because even with Adblock, you still have to block each ad you see, so you'll see it at least once, and overall, that's still pretty good for them. And they're hoping that sloppy blocking will cause people to break their browsing experience by blocking too much, by blocking something essential, and thus remove Adblock, if not switch back to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which is and has been for the past ten years, for the most part advertiser-friendly. (Can you imagine... two or more profitable companies working together to make more profit? In this day and age? In a Capitalist society? You betcha.) And then, you're back at square one.
It's a filter that makes Adblock really cool, and it's a filtered Adblock that has advertisers scared out of their minds. Because it is wholly possible to install Windows on a new computer, get connected to the Internet, install Firefox from a CD or network resource, connect to the Mozilla site, get Adblock, get a filter, and begin surfing the Internet, ad-free, having never loaded an ad on that machine. It's like your kid getting beat up by bullies for his lunch money, so you get him a debit card, and since the bullies don't know the PIN number, and your kid isn't telling them, they have no way of exploiting your kid for extra money, so it really throws them for a loop. What will they do? Might they have to actually work for their money like the rest of us? Because in a free-market society like what we have, what advertisers are doing isn't illegal. It's dishonest, it surely isn't nice, but they've found a way to make money without taking anything of considerable value. We don't really have an established value on what's called "screen real estate" (things taking up space on your screen) or bandwidth. In sue-happy America, people don't pay for ISP bandwidth; stuff like that happens in the UK, in Australia, and other countries, but most if not all Americans pay a flat rate for their Internet (as opposed to paying a small fee for each megabyte sent and received) so of course they won't be sued, and in any case, most ads are optimized for size - so they load quicker. There are a few Adblock filters around the Net, but I just use Filterset.G provided by Pierceive. I've only seen a couple things it doesn't catch, and it's nothing I mind. Furthermore, there is another Firefox extension called the Filterset.G Updater, which when combined with Adblock, will keep your Adblock filters up-to-date.
Quick links: Get Firefox | Get Adblock | Filterset.G Homepage | Get Filterset.G Updater
So what's the catch? Of course there's a catch. While it's free, easy, and legal to block every ad on the Net (so what's the problem, eh?), there are a couple things you should know. Some sites are supported by advertising; that is, the site owners depend on the revenue from the ads to run their site. With Firefox only taking up a 14-15% market share, while Internet Explorer hogs the rest, this problem is only theoretical at this point as over 90%, maybe 95%, of web surfers, are not blocking ads. (Not all Firefox users have Adblock and a good filter.) But every day, more and more people are using Firefox, discovering Adblock, and learning about filters. After all, you're reading this.
Now personally, I think most sites can be paid out of pocket. I run a message board, and it costs $10 a month, and every year I have to pay $10 to renew the domain name (darkrealitymb.com). That ain't bad; most people pay more to play Final Fantasy XI or World of Warcraft. So if I, a regular working-class Joe, can afford to run a website, just about anyone with a computer and a debit or credit card can. It's not that much. My site isn't very big, but then I'm also paying a bit more for hosting than I should be, were it just hosting; I'm also getting a leased license to use the very best message board software, Invision Power Board. I could buy it outright for about $200, then be free to pursue much cheaper hosting options, but I haven't got the $200. Or I could use the free phpBB platform... but I really like Invision, and the costs don't bother me at this point. Anyway, my point is, if I can run a message board using the best software, and I work in a factory, who out there cannot? And if you have a larger site, surely you have a larger community, people willing to pay to be a part of a significantly well known site on the Net. So as sites get bigger, costs get bigger, but you're paying for a bigger piece of real estate on the Net. Enter advertisers; for each view of an ad, you get a penny or two, and for each click, you get a couple more. Sounds like chump change, but if you're getting thousands of visitors, advertising can quickly pay some or all of a large site's hosting, and maybe even buy the webmasters lunch once in a while. (Smaller sites aren't eligible for advertising to begin with, not enough viewers.)
So where's the problem? You use Adblock, you use a good filter, and maybe 5-10% of your favorite site's advertising revenue is eaten up. I think most people who work for a living can at least afford to run a site, unless it's something large, hosting large files - for example it has several game demos. But sites like these are usually if not always corporate-backed. nVidia, the world's leader in graphics acceleration cards (to let you play high-end games on your PC), has several game demos on their site, but they also sell PC cards for hundreds of dollars. They're making plenty of money, so they can run a site. Far as I know, the nVidia site doesn't have ads, except for nVidia products, and that doesn't count (as advertising revenue, anyway). The hypothetical problem is that if Adblock and filters get big, advertisers will pay less for views and clicks, there will in fact be fewer views and clicks, and fewer working folks will run web sites, and all the information online will be controlled by corporations. That's the idea, anyway.
Personally, I don't think it's anything to worry about. I highly doubt the Wikipedia is going anywhere, and that's probably the best source for information, period. (Being an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, controversial pages like Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush are going to get edited every day, every now and then by some fanatic who loves or hates them and puts a heck of a bias on the information. But first, people who do too much damage can be blocked, and second, pages with controversial surroundings are tagged as such, and it's possible to roll back all the changes made, see prior versions of each page.) There are free board hosts, such as Invisionfree, who offer free, albeit ad-supported, message boards, running the old, once-free version of Invision Power Board. And there will always be the free web page providers, such as Yahoo's Geocities.
But back to the chase and chase reversal. Where is this actually going to go? Ten years ago, when the Net was first starting to catch on with consumers, ads were simple, just a banner at the top, occasionally at the bottom, of pages. As time went on, they got greedier, spreading ads throughout the page, then the animated ads, the popups, the popunders, and most recently, software classified as "Adware", which makes popups appear at random intervals, or "Spyware", which tracks your browsing habits, digs up your contact information, and sends it back to the host, to be compiled and sold to spammers and telemarketers. So the advertisers have really been pushing, to milk the Net for all it's worth. Now that people who are tired of it are fighting back with Adblock and a filter such as Filterset.G, advertisers are going to have to take a step back. They're going to have to end their assault on the Net unless they want to be completely wiped out, and they're going to have to reach a compromise which will allow them to continue to profit, yet not bother those of us who, for the last bloody time, do not want their junk.
Google, that web behemoth, has already taken one step. The Google Adsense ads, also known as "Ads by Gooooogle", are not intrusive at all. Though some are colored, they're text-based, and coupled with Google's search technology, to make them relevant to what you're reading. I see them in Google's email service, Gmail, and it's uncanny how close they are to the context of what I'm reading. (No, Google doesn't read Gmail members' mail, the process is completely automated.) Google are even, it seems, paying ad-supported sites, $1 for every user who clicks through their ad to download Firefox. How's that for a peace offering? But Google isn't the only advertiser on the Net, and certainly not the biggest. Surely, more compromises are going to have to be made.
Advertisers have a heck of an opportunity in 2006 to change their ways. It may not happen, and they may have to fall a little farther before they realize they're going to have to compromise, but as I say, they have a chance. This time next year, Microsoft is expected to ship Windows Vista, the sucessor to Windows XP, after 5 years of Windows XP. One important part of Vista will be Internet Explorer 7, which borrows a couple key features from Firefox: tabbed browsing and the search box. Really, current beta builds of MSIE 7 look like a stripped-down Firefox. But MSIE 7 will not support extensions, of course, so don't expect Adblock for MSIE any time soon. But because the hardcore geeks using Firefox are also going to want first shot at Vista, and a chance to check out MSIE 7 (we're at least curious) so more than likely, this time next year, Firefox usage will dip a little as people swarm to MSIE 7. For the advertisers, that means more views and more clicks that quarter.
My suggestion is simple: Why not have ads that support Adblock themselves, browser independent? All they have to do is place a link under the ad saying "I don't want to see this ad" and this would place a cookie on the user's computer. Seeing that cookie, the site would hide the ad. Clicking more "I don't want to see this ad" link would add to the cookie file, allowing the user to block multiple ads. Going to an advertising company's web page, you could possibly "apply" to block all their ads... that is, you read a little paragraph that basically says "I don't like looking at ads, please opt me out of your ads" and hitting OK below that would inflate the cookie to block all ads from that advertiser. Because the thing is, there are people who don't want to buy stuff online, regardless. There are people who will not buy anything that's pushed on them. Harassing them is just going to make them want to use Firefox and Adblock and a filter, and block everything, and surely advertisers would rather they block individual ads than all of them. Plus, it might make them look a little more honest. Consumers don't want to do business with those who would harass us - look at how we feel about used car salesmen! But if we start seeing ads that will remove themselves with a click and stay gone, it makes the advertisers look a heck of a lot better, and will probably bring in more clicks.
For our part, there is a second Adblock. It's called Adblock Plus, and the major Plus about it is its whitelist. Furthermore, Filterset.G has a whitelist, so if you decide to compromise, you can still use Filterset.G, and you can whitelist sites. That is, if you know of a site that really helps you out, and you feel uncomfortable taking away their advertising revenue, and/or you know their ads are unintrusive, you can whitelist them, simply by putting @@ before their URL. For example, if you wanted to whitelist this board, you'd add @@invisionpower.com. I have a couple of sites whitelisted - yes, I use Adblock Plus. In debating the issues of ads versus blocking ads, I came to realize that a site which is important to me relies on advertising revenue, and I realized that I didn't want to hurt them, that putting up with the Paypal link in the corner and a banner across the top was a small price to pay to ensure they remained online and in business.
Because at the end of the day, advertisers are only paying the sites that push their ads. They aren't helping you with the cost of your computer. They're not paying for your Internet access. They're not paying you for the space they take up on your screen. Twenty years ago, our computers were really our own. They only did what we wanted them to, they worked for us. Now there are people who have found a way to make millions of computers on the Net, work for them, at many times, against their owners. This isn't right, but it's also not entirely illegal. Lawmakers are going after spammers and spyware authors, but too few, too late. People, the masses of people on the Net, need to rethink their computer, reimagine it as their own, and understand that anything on their screen, on their hard disk, is only there at their invitation, as their guest, as it were, and if they're unwanted, you should be able to remove it. Until these advertisers offer to give you a PC, or pay for your Internet access, they have no "right" to post ads all over your screen. As of now, consider yourself educated. You've been given the facts, albeit slightly biased, but both sides have been given. You have access to the tools needed to make the choice to opt-out of every ad on the Net, or selectively. By doing nothing, either by sticking with Internet Explorer, or by using Firefox without Adblock, or having Adblock without a filter, you are now making the choice to opt-in to these advertisements, and they are there at your invitation, given that you now have the knowledge and the tools to remove them. (If you're on a work computer, you probably can't change what you use - best you can do is convince IT that Firefox is a better choice. But if you're on a work computer, it's not your computer anyway, it's work's computer. Or if it's your parents' computer, it's not yours, it's theirs, and in both cases, all you can do is educate the computer's owner.)
To close, I am not trying to convince everyone to go blocking ads. My message is simple, and it's this: If you don't want to see ads, you no longer have to.
Yes, I wrote this. I didn't copy it from another site or Blog.
