Firefox boycotted because of an ad-blocker

By memenode on 18 Aug 2007

There is an ongoing campaign at WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com which apparently encourages site owners to block Firefox users diverting them to that page. Here is their reasoning:

"The Mozilla Foundation and its Commercial arm, the Mozilla Corporation, has allowed and endorsed Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites and also prevents site owners from blocking people using it. Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing." You can read it in full here.

This news has been found via this p2pnet story.

It is doubtful that this kind of campaign will hit fertile ground. As one commentator on p2pnet asserted, "any website that has any real impact on the web e.g amazon.com that blocks firefox will suffer a PR nightmare not to mention anty-monopoly / competition legal issues".

It appears that some web publishers are forgetting that it is exactly users because of which their business exists. They may be providing a valuable service, but in a saturated market that web is most web sites probably have an alternative. Show a little disrespect and they will easily flock elsewhere, or even start an alternative service.

It is therefore simply silly to claim that web publishers have the right to impose advertising on users without them even having the freedom to block this. If you don't want your ads to be blocked, then cut a deal with your visitors rather than alienating them completely. Talk to them with respect and then display ads in a way which wont prompt them to block it because they understand that this is your source of income.

If an ad blocker sweepingly blocks all ads including those which aren't intrusive the solution definitely isn't in attacking on the users of ad blockers, but in attacking the lack of sense of responsibility of web publishers for the only reason why ad blockers are popular is the fact that so many web sites have intrusive advertising.

In the mean time there are ways to display adverts without them being blocked, yet still making them sufficiently non-intrusive for users not to complain or find ways to block those too. Still a foolproof way of doing this seems to be clean manually embedded text link (and even image) ads.

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This is wrong on so many

by tbuitenh | Sun, 2007-08-19 09:54

This is wrong on so many levels. Why do all firefox users have to suffer because some use adblock? And what's next, blocking users who simply don't look at ads (and therefore don't reach a click quota?

Also, where is my right to boycot advertisers who are wasting my bandwidth with advertisements I'm not interested in and never will be interested in? It's MY internet connection, I paid for it. I'm not interested in paying for data that I don't need and that won't make me buy anything either. Give me text link ads, all the other junk makes me leave your site as quick as I can anyway.

Besides, it's easy enough to make firefox indistinguishable from MSIE, while still blocking ads. User agent switcher anyone?

Chaos, another word for 'Internet'

by spaceboy | Tue, 2007-08-21 17:33

Years ago I used to say, "I don't mind a few banner ads". Whether it was on 56k or broadband, a few small ads didn't bother me. I just ignored them. But that was back in the days of animated gifs that were 10kb-30kb a pop.

Now it has gotten out of hand. I am thoroughly disguested with the abuse of broadband lines by greedy site owners. Some of these web sites now run into the tens of Mb's with all of the ads.

When I first got broadband back in 2000, it was fast. Now, it is quickly becoming 56k again, simply because of the massive amount of ads.

And the ads don't just affect bandwidth. For those of us who can't afford an upgrade every year, it poses another problem. My four year old box, is gradually having its' resources maxed out with these insane ads. It doesn't matter what browser I use; IE, Firefox, Opera.

The site owners are abusing MY connection, MY computer, MY screen space and MY time. And for the record, in 10 years of web surfing, I can vaguely recall ONE time where an ad actually inticed me to buy something. The rest of the time, the massive amount of UNtargeted ads are completely wasted on me.

I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of hundred gigs of bandwidth has been wasted on me in attempt to sell me cars, home loans, idiot trinkets or match me up with old school mates. Enough is enough.

I will happily look at your ads if you actually have something that interests me, but otherwise, what's the point?

The point of some of the

by memenode | Tue, 2007-08-21 22:06

The point of some of the perhaps untargeted ads is sometimes in simply gaining an incoming high rank link and sometimes it is just plain imposition of awareness of a certain brand (which is where it starts to cross the line).

That said I agree with you fully about it getting out of hand, which is why I support text link ads primarily and perhaps some non-blinking, unintrusive and light image ads or banners - something that can actually load even on 56K without significantly spoiling the experience.

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Some TV ad execs lobbied for

by democrates | Wed, 2007-08-22 15:42

Some TV ad execs lobbied for a modification to sets that prevented changing the channel or even lowering the sound during the ad break. There was the exact same ranting about stealing.

Some TV broadcasters reduce the volume during normal content, and only put it to 100% for ads. This attempt to exceed my preferred listening volume means that the mute button is deployed each time the ads come on, their tactic has backfired and they now get less attention. Some are making the same mistake online.

Of course they have it backwards. The opportunity to gain our attention is a privilege voluntarily granted, not a right that can be enforced.