Pretty much everyone I know uses some form of ad-blocker to attempt to block some of the more annoying advertisements that websites have come up with. Websites brought it on themselves, ads with moving video and audio, ads that attempt to take over the screen or page, popups, etc, all annoyed consumers to the point where some form of ad-block was required in order to just read the pages you want.
And a few sites have started putting banners at the tops of their pages saying something to the effect of “hey, we understand WHY you use an adblocker, but ads are what makes us money, so can you whitelist us please?”. And for those I will frequently temporarily whitelist them to see how annoying their ads are, and if they aren’t too bad I will sometimes whitelist them, especially if they’re a site I frequent (it depends though, cause some of the things blocked also affect my privacy, so yah). Because I do understand.
But recently I’ve noticed a disturbing trend.
Those are screenshots, taken today, of two different webpages. One is an article from the LA Times, the other an article from Wired.
Now, I am aware, from conversation, on the blogs where I got the original links that not everyone is having the same issue, even if they’re using the same adblocker. So I’m not sure how these sites are determining who to block and who to not block. But the “whitelist us or pay us” technique doesn’t work for me. Neither of these articles, hell, neither of these sites, is so important to me that I wish to give up on some fragment of my privacy much less deal with the annoyance of the advertisements in order to read them.
However I find the trend disturbing…….
I have accessed sites that demand I allow cookies in order to keep using those sites. I just exit the site, rather than let them load my computer with who knows what software in the cookies.
I haven’t seen those yet. I’ve had ones ask me to allow cookies, but not insist. Awesome……