Is it right to use an ad blocker with your browser?
Ad blockers may seem great at first glance, but are they really? What would happen to the internet if we all had ad blockers switched on permanently?
http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/news/columnists/complex-nature-of-internet-ecosystem-1-6112900
Eli Fennell there are many shades of grey and even tech savvy people like us have trouble sorting out the good from the bad. Does that make ad blockers potentially too heavy handed? Would regulation/enforcement solve the issue?
In a perfect world, poor design choices would stop the offending sites from becoming popular in the first place.
Which brings me to the F word. Yeah, Facebook.
I couldn’t resist the urge to mention them Eli Fennell ;)
Talking about poor/misleading advert placement in another thread at the moment. For example, inside blog posts where the ad breaks the flow of the article and may appear to be part of the content. I am undecided whether it is good or bad at the moment in general. I guess some things must be handled on a case by case basis.
You trust Google as an ad source Eli Fennell ?
They are one of the worst for delivering total junk in my experience. They inflict me with ads for things that are totally irrelevant. I just ignore them but they are annoying at times.
Using an ad blocker is a bad idea although taking steps to stop ad spam is positive. I have ads on my sites because I have to earn a living. Nobody is forced to click on them but if they see them and do then I may make a little to help a site that provides a lot of free information online. Use an ad blocker and you take that chance from me so the site disappears. I need the ads to continue. No force or incentives to click on them but they do bring in an income. People buy newspapers but they dont request that the ads get cut out of them so why block them from my or any other site?
Same thing essentially because media is about advertising. It is what pay a lot of the bills
True, Eli Fennell Google arent to the best of my knowledge selling on any identifiable personal data. Yet they do collect it extensively and use it to deliver ads.
The example you give even predates the internet boom. Go ask that to a list broker and they will have the answer for you within the day.
These are big companies that will do this as well because renting segments of their lists represents additional revenue.
Again looking at your example then it is flawed. To be able to supply a list based on the information that you state then the visitor has to have entered details on a website. That site should have provided the option to opt out of 3rd party communications but not all do.
However, once that information is available, the list owner is able to market it to others.
This has long been marketing practice so there is nothing new in it on the internet.
Gathering information out of site then sharing that is a different matter and is plain wrong.
Newspapers don’t infect your computer with malware, banking trojans. Newspapers don’t employ invasive measurers to track you.
Websites chicken’s have come home to roost!