The safe thing to do is to block Ads by default. And only disable them when they've shown that they're not just letting mass third party Ad networks embed arbitrary script in their page whilst harvesting your private information.

Being online at all exposes you to risk and creates a footprint of your existence. Much like moving around in public does. And just as in moving around in public, the safest and most private thing to do is to not be in public at all.

Personally I block ads because I value my attention higher than advertisers value it. There is always an adversarial function built into ads; the advertising wants your attention, if nothing else, while I am interested in maintaining my focus. For similar reasons, I disable auto-suggest in Google search, animated gifs in the browser, and I use flashblock in all browsers that support it.

Anything continuously animated on the page whatsoever - no matter whether it's an ad, a subscription div popup, a "read next article" popup link, or a sharing toolbar - I block them all with element hiding helpers.

Because the greatest risk to me in browsing a random site is getting distracted and sucked down some rabbit hole. I use all the tools at my disposal to eliminate visual distraction.

By blocking adverts, you're harming the people who make the things you like, in direct proportion to how much you like their content. The more you visit their site, the more load you make them pay for without giving anything in return.

If you're okay with harming others to keep yourself safe, and harming your ability to consume additional content from the people you want to consume content from, then fine. Continue to block ads. But know you're part of the problem, and are being selfish.

I don't block ads but I do use NoScript which means I rarely see them. It is increasingly common for pages to load scripts from dozens of different providers and those sites I generally turn away from.

If you want to hobble around the web like it's 1995, that's your business. If you want access to content that's paid for by adverts, however, you need to be counted. That's the only way that content will be produced at all. You're not only harming the content producer, you're also harming yourself by lowering the number of interesting things in this world.

* pop-up blocking

* cookie blocking

* readability

..all of which are common browser features now. Because you can just not visit bad sites.

Yeah, didn't think so.

Blocking one form of advert is not even slightly the same as blocking all forms of adverts.

There is an implicit social contract created when a content distributor attempts to monetize the content - you can only obtain the content if you go through the monetization strategy. Sometimes that's a price on the content, other times that's an advert.

Circumventing the monetization strategy is a statement that you believe you're entitled to the content without paying for it. Almost universally, you're not, and this entitlement complex is pervasive through Internet users. TV shows, movies, music, software, anything that's been given artificial scarcity is a target for this entitlement attitude.

For some content, this attitude doesn't hurt the content producer enough to be meaningful, or the content producer has adapted. This is almost universally the most valuable and previously established content producers. Your large game studios, your record labels, etc. For other content producers, however, those who aren't as well established, the harm is more severe. The independent web comic, the unsigned band, the budding writer, the local newspaper. These people suffer because Internet users think they deserve the content these people create without providing compensation, and subsequently, less content gets made, talent can't be developed, gifted individuals can't specialize, and the world is a less beautiful place.

So sure, we can continue to use ad blockers, but at what cost? It's not hurting U2, and it's not hurting J.K. Rowling, but it's hurting other people, people who feel the kinds of pain a 1.5% vs. a 2.5% CTR might bring.

Well good, then you just misunderstood me. I'm asking for an animated HTML5 ad blocker to parallel a Flash blocker (or pop-up blocker, etc.) Not something that blocks all ads.

Although you didn't state it specifically, presumably you're ok with pop-up blockers. And therefore accept that it is ok for consumers to override the choices of bad web site designers in some cases, not merely choose to never visit the site again. Flash blockers did the same thing. Cookie blockers and readability are relevant for the same reasons. Consumers have a vote on how the web should be designed, too.

Exactly the wrong-headed sense of entitlement I'm talking about. No, you absolutely do not get a say, whatsoever. You either get the product through the monetization scheme set up by the content owner, or you get no content at all.

Its better to just accept this fact and work with it than attempt to boil the ocean.

one might also ask about what kind of entitlement an attitude like yours is bringing to the table.

It's probably more an issue of, we are in a difficult situation where some businesses don't know how to monetize outside of advertising (like google). And if everyone could block them, you'd effectively destroy businesses like that.

But on the flip side, the advert business model have gotten everyone used to 'free'. If google started selling "Search packs" where you get 100 searchs for $20, I don't think people would go for it.

It's a practical problem as much as a moral one. Content producers need to pay the bills somehow, and ads can be an effective way of doing that, if people don't try to circumvent them.

If you send me some data. I can choose to view or ignore any of it. You have absolutely no stance to make me acknowledge all of it, or any of it.

If I asked for some data from your server and you sent it, you sent it. But I don't have to read all of it. Even the bits that make you money.

Further, some people choose (or more likely didn't know they had a choice) to make you money, if you want their money, in aggregate their wishes are something you are interested in. At no point does entitlement enter into this.

By breaking that contract, you're preventing me from producing more content, content you apparently want. You're actually hurting yourself, from a practical standpoint, as well as causing harm to me.

seems unrelated.

Advertisements have a measurable cost on me. I have limited focus, losing it is expensive to me. I've seen advertisements change the thinking and perception of my peers, and it scares the crap out of me. I am all for uplifting the community through my actions, but this cost is too great. I have an extreme distrust of advertisments anyway, I never click on them (except by accident, which was frequently btw, until I started blocking them), so even If I acknowledge them, I'm still not making you money.

and finally, this is just a side note which I think only applies to me, most content I consume only has advertisements introduced by the gatekeepers (or I pay for it). Youtube, blip, et al. I'd rather the producers just use distributed systems, but we can't always get what we want.

And I mean social contract as in a contract you agree to by simply being part of society that stands above law. Don't kill people, don't steal things, that kind of thing. Things you do and are therefore allowed to be part of society.

Morals are subjective, the people that surround me believe there is nothing wrong with my actions, if your only standing point is that it's "morally wrong" then you have failed to convince me.

That, of course, is not your only point. You also believe that without the advertisements the content I enjoy wouldn't be produced. This argument has some grounds. The only problem is how actively degenerate ads are. I can outright improve almost all media just by removing them.

Let's say the "nightmare scenario" happens, and almost everyone blocks ads with ad block. Ad Block is running an initiative of acceptable ads. Ads that arn't decietful, distracting, or annoying (which, in my opinion, is a far more morally abhorrent act). So if everyone started using ad block. The world would actually get measurably better. Not worse.

Trying to dictate morality never ends well. Especially in cases like this, where the specific tech is not only possible, but also has unarguably legitimate uses, and is therefore pretty much inevitable. You just end up tilting at windmills, and the ensuing hot air back and forth just creates pointless noise, generally adding little to the discussion.

And popup / cookie blocking has been standard (not just common!) for a while, so I assume you didn't mean that.

http://evernote.com/clearly/

The only winning move is to not visit a site.

No, it really isn't.

Unless you configure your browser otherwise. Which is what I'm recommending people do.

You aren't entitled to content just because it's good.

Your response to this is circumventing the ads and blocking them, denying the service which you use any revenue from you. Awesome.

How about if a site has intrusive over/under ads or otherwise intrusive behavior, you just don't visit it? And allow the sites you use that do ads without being jerks about it to actually continue to function and provide the service that you apparently value?

EDIT:

I'm not normally someone who crusades against ad blocking software, but your comment was extremely obnoxious and really annoyed me.

I think an domain blacklist a la Adblock is probably the best idea but that won't help you with ads that are already present in the DOM on pageload.

I should have been more clear. My apologies.

Also believe it or not I don't want to block all ads, just animated ones. I want a general solution for All People, not just us nerds, and erasing advertising from the web would destroy a lot of businesses.

I want something browser makers can build in and turn on by default, which is what Safari has essentially done now with Mavericks (Flash and Java are blocked by default.. Flash under the rubric of power conservation).

That is the solution, frankly.

It would be a plugin that allows you to mark a spot on a page that is an ad and the plugin will record the very specific CSS path and hide it permanently for you and others that go to visit that site.

Maybe once you have a significant number of CSS paths you could do something with machine learning to identify the likeliness of a div containing an ad and block it when it crosses a certain degree of confidence.

If there's an exceptional case I open it in a Chromium private browsing window.

    NoScript blocks all javascript except for a whitelist you have to construct.

[0] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/its-made...

Ghostery would only send data back to Evidon if GhostRank option is enabled.

Like running ads in a standalone plugin which could be easily disabled. Wait...

No one is obligated to alter their own behavior in order to sustain someone else's business model. How publishers make money is their problem to solve, and if they're publishing content on the open web that's viewable with web browsers, then it's up to them to decide how to deal with the fact that some web browsers aren't going to download the ads.

They have plenty of alternative options: they can block all of the content unless ads are downloaded; they can put all of the content behind a paywall, etc. But most websites don't employ these methods, and do leave their content accessible to people who block ads.

I just want an HTML5 version of a Flash blocker.

People make their money via ads? Sure, why not. Do I always have to see those ads, and just sigh and "suck it up", even though it's potentially ruining my browsing experience? I don't think so.

Would you pay a monthly fee to all the websites that provide you content in exchange for an ad free experience?

I guess the people running those websites will have to choose between continuing to publish content on the open web, knowing that some users won't look at the ads, or putting everything behind a paywall, knowing that some users won't subscribe.

And in the end, he says that interesting content will get you "Likes," where in the current conversation of blocking ads does the visitor contribute after perusing the valuable and interesting content?

Of course whatever floats your boat as long as there's some sort of compensation for the media one is ingesting. I don't really mind non-intrusive ads all that much.

I want to be the customer, not the product being sold.

It would be nice if this was also a social version of user scripts where I could visit all the user scripts that other users wrote that work on the page I am currently on. A button in the browser that takes me to all the user scripts that match the URL pattern for that page would be awesome.

I also use it to remove annoying sign-up overlays and Google+ notifications when I search.

It does not, unfortunately, prevent the ads from seeing you. (Very nearly literally these days.)

Of course it's realistic. I've been doing it for years.

Do you also use a "@@*$document,domain=~foo.com|~bar.com" filter in order to accomplish it?