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Re:Ad blockers are part of the problem by Doctor_Fegg on Monday November 21, 2016 @07:55AM (#13004976)
> The customer is always right.

In what sense of the word are you a "customer" of Troy Hunt?

Re:Ad blockers are part of the problem by ominous on Monday November 21, 2016 @08:28AM (#13005180)
I am paying by using the site. I will remember its name, talk about it, be receptive to conversations about it, might comment there with my opinion, remember who Troy is, his opinions, drive others there, keep him alive in the hive mind.

Or did you think bloggers blogged out of kindness?

So I consume. And pay what I am aware of (attention) and what I am not (tracking and ads).

Re:Ad blockers are part of the problem by gaius on Monday November 21, 2016 @08:03AM (#13005033)
If he gets a payment for an action you take, of course.
Re:Ad blockers are part of the problem by omginternets on Monday November 21, 2016 @08:02AM (#13005029)
Good point. I should have said "end-user".
Re:Ad blockers are part of the problem by fixermark on Monday November 21, 2016 @08:06AM (#13005052)
And the end-user is demonstrably not always right.
Re:Ad blockers are part of the problem by omginternets on Monday November 21, 2016 @08:12AM (#13005093)
In what sense?

I'm using "the customer is always right" in its idiomatic sense, not in a literal sense. The point is: arguing with your customer that what he wants is wrong is not a fruitful approach to ... well... anything.

Re:Ad blockers are part of the problem by fixermark on Monday November 21, 2016 @10:31AM (#13006073)
Arguing with your customer that what he wants is wrong at the point of sale is, in the short-term, not a revenue-optimizing strategy.

1) Commenting on one's own blog about things one has observed that could be adjusted to improve the market as a whole is perfectly fine and doesn't usually do any short-term damage to one's brand (you can touch a nerve and trigger a boycott, but that's probably unlikely given this topic). Comments on this topic are important, because people who use ad blockers may not realize that their short-term gains are pointing to a world where content creators have to bake the ads into the content itself to get paid. If they don't want that, it's good this signal is in the zeitgeist for them to consider.

2) Sometimes, even deciding a specific customer is too damaging to your ability to serve customers in general and service needs to be refused is the right choice.

To pop out of the analogy and into the world of web transactions: people are very much allowed to run ad blockers. And I'm very much allowed to craft a site to detect ad blockers and begin 400'ing requests or failing to load page content if I can't verify the ads are shown. It's, ultimately, your content to display and my content to vend. It's a two-sided transaction by the very nature of the protocol.