As I wander hither and yon through this here Intarwebz thingy, I occasionally run across this kind of bleat when I open a page:
Okay, here’s a little note to the Observer and all the other websites who try this cutesy little trick on us the readers:
The reason we use AdBlocker is because your websites are full of intrusive, pop-up bullshit with loud autoplay videos and (at times) really questionable advertisements which are sometimes nothing more than phishing scams and clickbait links to truly awful websites.
In the specific case of the Observer above, when I paused Adblocker this morning as they requested, a loud piece of BBC World News-type theme started blaring from my speakers, quite disturbing my enjoyment of Gabriel Fauré’s Pavane playing quietly in the background.
Sorry: intrusive autoplay ads are the very raison d’être of AdBlocker. Get rid of them and we can talk again. Until then, however, your content isn’t worth it — no matter how much you think it is.
I might allow ads onto this site at some point because $money$, but I give you my word, O Gentle Readers: you won’t ever need AdBlocker.
Auto-play is a scourge on the internet.
I’m with you, Kim, and I will add that one of the quickest ways to make me leave a site is to see that pop up demanding that I turn off Ad-blocker. They need me more than I need them, so it’s goodbye as soon as I see that.
I don’t go to sights that I need ad blocker for. Never turn it off. Also have scripts blocked for the most part as those insidious things get all kinds of data off your machine.
Quick trick, disable javascript and the annoying ‘please whitelist our spammy site!” popup doesn’t popup, and you can read the story in peace.
Some sites will then divert you to another page telling you to enable java or scripting to see your preferred page.
Not worth it is literally my sentiment. On the few times I conducted the same experiment, not only did they confirm the need, from a sanity standpoint, for an adblocker, but the content they provide is never worth the click itself, much less disabling my adblocker.
If you are that worried about serving ads, you aren’t spending the time on content to make the ads worth it.
Also, if one does not have a very late Win7 era to new computer, their ads will lock a system up. Even my 64 bit system running Mint gets heartburn from these places.
I often stream Euro sports channels, (BTSport for MotoGP, EuroSport for Speedway, Motors for endurance racing, etc) and all the ads on those are phishing sites . . . “This is a message from Microsoft . . .” really? I’m glad to know I’ve got a Microsoft exploiting virus on a Linux based machine. Miraculous. (I had the blocker off to watch a stream full screen on one site, and that was one of two autoplays at the same time.
In anticipation of tasteful non obtrusive ads I have already white-listed your site.
uBlock Origin. Love it. Works wonderfully.
I’ll whitelist the sites I frequent as long as their ads are not too offensive. I’ve whitelisted here preemptively (Great Snook that’s good thinking).