[659087]

If you provide value, people (myself included) will happily pay for it. People who go out of their way to optimize their websites for ad revenue are not among those "providing value" to anyone.

Ads are psychological malware, even when they aren't serving actual malware.

> why so negative?

Probably has something to do with the advertising industry doing everything it possibly can to infiltrate every facet of our lives and ruin everything that was ever good about the internet and the web.

[AFNobody]

> If you provide value, people (myself included) will happily pay for it.

If it has no value, stop accessing it instead of blocking the ads.

[659087]

If I visit a site for the first time without any ad blocking enabled, and realize it provides no value, how do I reverse my exposure to those ads? How do I claw back whatever data their tracking scripts collected about me?

[AFNobody]

> If I visit a site for the first time without any ad blocking enabled, and realize it provides no value, how do I reverse my exposure to those ads? How do I claw back whatever data their tracking scripts collected about me?

The exposure you are talking about is a non-issue, particularly given every site you contact has that same information (even without Ads).

If you are concerned about that level of privacy, you should be using https://tails.boum.org or a no logs VPN.

[sixtypoundhound]

> If you provide value, people (myself included) will happily pay for it. People who go out of their way to optimize their websites for ad revenue are not among those "providing value" to anyone.

I disagree at multiple levels.

While ethically attractive, most people don't pay. This has been proven multiple times across multiple mediums. Look at free-to-play gaming, for example. Worse, go see the badgering and feature locking which goes on as they attempt to extort you into forking over some cash. Is that really the web you want to live in?

From a creator perspective, this sucks even harder. Now I have to manage a bunch of paying customers, many of whom want "support" since I accepted their cash. Some of them even will attempt to bother me in the offline world over any disagreements between their expectations and my own. You would be disturbed by some of the emails I get from patrons of "free sites" - god forbid I should take money from these people and be morally obliged to serve them. My favorite part about being an ad supported publisher is having the moral freedom to tell a jerk to hit the road. Or call the cops if they attempt to contact me offline. I really don't need another boss in my life....

A good ad optimization process can provide a ton of value to the user experience... because keeping users happy is directly related to making more money. Higher bounce rate is lost revenue. Less pages per visit is lost revenue. Slower loads hit you in wallet too (higher bounce rate, shorter time on screen for the advertisement). Oh - and Big Daddy Google turns off your organic search traffic if you deliver a really lousy user experience. Game over.

Now... most of the ads that annoy customers are actually very low paying placements. Those click-bait sites? That wasn't high paying ad space, for either the click which sent you there or the clicks you did while you browsed. Browser redirects? Also cheap, throwaway traffic.

Most websites would be better if they eliminated their lowest advertising placements. The quality usually sucks.