[Vraxx]

It's about intent. Yes, currently you can work your way around ads and anti-adblockers, but seeing as that's not the intention of the publisher they will eventually have anti-anti-ad-blocker measures just as they came up with anti-ad-blocker measures in the first place. The way content has developed on the internet is based on this implicit agreement that the free content comes with the ads, if there was no revenue source, they might not desire to be in the content publishing business in the first place.

All that being said, I'm not sure how me seeing the ads helps them as I never click on them anyways, but I chalk that up to their business issue. I do not necessarily believe that just because they don't provide their content in a form/implicit contract that I wish to participate in, that I am still entitled to consume that content. A prime example for myself is EA Games. I disagree with a lot of their publishing practices and business decisions, but that doesn't mean I play all their games as pirated versions anyways, I simply abstain. Consuming the content by skirting this implied contract only results in this arms race you see in games, online content, and just about any other form of media. It's a competition between users wanting money-free content and publishers wanting to control exactly how their media is distributed and paid for. I don't think either side in this fight is right, but by participating on one side it eggs the other side on.

[tripzilch]

> I'm not sure how me seeing the ads helps them as I never click on them anyways, but I chalk that up to their business issue. I do not necessarily believe that just because they don't provide their content in a form/implicit contract that I wish to participate in, that I am still entitled to consume that content.

Wait, I don't get this "business issue". If you really never click the ads, you're ultimately not making anyone any money either. In fact, if you think ad-blocking is bad, merely never clicking on them is even more toxic to that industry. And I don't mean bandwidth. Because now it's the businesses paying to uselessly show you ads who are paying for your free content.

How is that better? You're still consuming your content for free (which is a terrible thing :P), except you're now also voluntarily punishing yourself with advertisements you don't care about that do nobody any favours. Of course you're free to believe that makes up for it, or something (not judging, they used to base entire religions around the concept).

I find it a bit hard to reconcile chalking up never-clicking-ads as their business issue, and simply not downloading and displaying the ads at all (thus also never clicking them) as a user problem.

[jrs235]

I wonder if it would be possible to successfully sue a site that asks you to disable your ad blocker, which you do, and then serves up malware ads that infect your computer? I'm sure they'll try to say their ToS protects them but that doesn't mean it's so.

[ultramancool]

> anti-anti-ad-blocker measures just as they came up with anti-ad-blocker measures in the first place.

To be fair, the current anti-anti-adblockers like anti-adblock killer could defeat such a measure as is. Short of rendering their page to an image with ads builtin, there's not much you can do if someone's willing to replace JS.

What do you have against a good old fashioned cat and mouse game?

[kbenson]

It's a waste of time and resources, and as long as one side persists in thinking that they can work around ad-blockers, and the other thinks it is justified in ignoring clear terms of use, then we won't ever get a solution that works better.

As it is right now, we are disincentivizing people from participating in a system that actually has a chance of surviving. Without compensation in some form, higher-tier journalism can't survive, and I for one don't think a world where all news comes from amateur bloggers is a better one.

[ultramancool]

I'm not so idealistic as to think I can change the model. I just want the content in a way that's acceptable to me so I can consume it now. It's not a waste of time if I save more time not looking at ads, not loading ads and have to remove less malware infections from my friends and family's computers. Not a waste of time at all!

The only way the model is going to change is if everyone adopts ad blockers and anti-anti solutions. And that's not going to happen. So I've got to deal with what we realistically have until someone comes up with this mythical better model and makes it work.

I can't change the model, but I can change what my computer does about it.

[kbenson]

That's a realistic position, and I can't fault you for that. I was responding mostly to "What do you have against a good old fashioned cat and mouse game?" I don't like where we are going, but I don't necessarily see a way to exert enough force to stop it, nor know what stopping it would result in. I don't think we'll actually end up with paid content going away, but it sure would be nice if we could skip a few years of bullshit half-solutions and fast-track something that works, whatever that ends up being. :/