[pmoriarty]

Forbes has started blocking their content if their site detects the use of an ad-blocker.

Interestingly, their content is still viewable (though in raw form) when viewing the page source, at least for now, and there are extensions allowing you to view it anyway.

The content-blocking / anti-content-blocking arms race has begun.

[etatoby]

Forbes started by asking nicely for people to disable ad blocking on their site, stating that their ads were not obnoxious nor dangerous.

I complied, just to find myself overwhelmed by some of the most obnoxious, heavy, and dangerous ads around.

The solution? STOP VISITING FORBES. It's that simple.

It also shows that you can't trust the publishers themselves to rate their own ads, and that's why an initiative like ABP's one is a good thing.

[lamontcg]

> STOP VISITING FORBES.

that was my solution. i've never found an article on forbes that was really critical to my life that i couldn't live without. generally its some clickbaity headline that i'm only very mildly interested in knowing what they have to say, and i'm happy to find some other source of basically the same information if i actually care. the only thing that forbes offers over their competition is that they wind up at the top of google results because all that ad revenue must get poured into hiring SEO optimization experts...

[Grishnakh]

Yes, but viewing the source or using extra extensions is more work. Is it really worth all that trouble to view Forbes articles?

Here's what I did: when Forbes asked me to disable my ad-blocker, I politely ignored the request. When it demanded that I disable my ad-blocker, and actively prevented me from viewing the articles, I simply went elsewhere. Problem solved: they made it too difficult to see their site while blocking ads, so I stopped going to their site.

Every site which really believes that ad-blocking is "theft" should do the same. But as long as they happily allow me to see the site while blocking ads, I have no problem doing so. I'm merely politely declining to view the ads, just as I politely decline the extra warranty when buying stuff, or I might not bother showing up early enough to see the ads in a theater before a movie, or I don't bother looking at billboards on the highway, or I muted the TV and/or went to the bathroom during commercial breaks back in the days when I watched TV.

If you really want people to look at your ads, you need to enforce that, instead of just whining about it. But if you enforce it, you might drive some people away, but there's nothing you can do about that. You can't have it both ways.