Google Cracks Down on Adblock

[Amaror]

However, the second option is one that no-one wants. Simply put, paying for the content. It seems horrible, what a crazy idea, having to pay to watch things on the internet! But if the websites are having ads blocked, and therefore not gaining enough money to keep hosting/providing for these content creators then they will have to turn to a paywall. The current system is pretty much the best system we could hope for, but a lot of people think "Nah, I can't waste 30 seconds of my precious time to ignore something so that the content I like can be produced!".

Ok and why is that the option that apparently "no-one" wants?
I allready pay for netflix gladly because it offers a great service to me. I would be willing to do the same for youtube, if it would provide me with a service of similar value.

 

[Doom972]

So less people will use google chrome and more people will use firefox.
Good job, google.

My first thought as well. That's the advantage of an open-source browser by a non-profit organization - no anti-consumer behavior.

I don't use Adblock because I want to support content creators, but I don't think that a browser should prevent you from using it.

 

[BrokenTinker]

I don't run Adblock on my PC personally because these sites need to make money but I do have it on my phone (for security reasons I get into in the next sentence). For my Pc, I use extensions like "NoScript" to protect against what people use Adblock for, period, and that is to prevent browser hijacking and XSS (cross-site scripting). Let's be honest, people wouldn't use Adblock if ads were just ads. They uses them from bad experiences, from having their browser taken over, from having pop-up ads obscure their screens, from having loud "screamers" pop up with the belief they can scare you into winning a new iPad.

This sites pretty good, NOW. It didn't use to be- I used to have to block really intrusive ads constantly here with the NoScript thingy. Now though, the ads are relatively harmless and I don't mind them.

Yeah, pretty much the reason I whitelisted escapist on and off. The people that complaints about ad-blockers are never the techsupp. type, why? Cause 3 cases out of 5, it's malicious ads that fucks it up (hello delta, conduits, some chinese shit that can't come out right cause UTF-8 doesn't seem to work with registries on some computers). And then there's the annoying video ads, good grief.

 

[Teoes]

Eh, doesn't bother me. I wouldn't use Adblock on YouTube anyway, because I don't care about having to ignore a few seconds' worth of ad in order to generate a little revenue for a YouTuber.

If that was all the ads on Youtube were, you would have a point. But YT ads are worse than just that.

There's usually an ad over to the right of the video, which is almost always animated and distracting. And in addition to that, there are the overlay ads which cover up the entire bottom half of the video. You can close those, but another usually pops up a few minutes later.

If it was just a few seconds of ad at the start of each video and nothing else, that would be fine. But unfortunately YT ads are more intrusive than that.

OK so maybe the ads are more pervasive than I initially gave credit, but I do have a point - in that in my experience and for the videos I watch, the presence of ads isn't a hassle.

 

[Raioken18]

Hmmm... are Escapist ADs less invasive now? I've disabled and re-enabled The Escapist site several times now, the adverts each time either involved loud noise, delayed audio, disabling videos in the middle making them unwatchable or some ungodly combination. Also sites advertised often had malware associated with them.

I would like to support this site by ignoring sidebar ads, but I would like to still be able to safely and consistently view content whilst doing so.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Go into the options and check the box that says "Allow whitelisting of specific youtube channels"

Unfortunately my options only contain "Show tabs on flash and java" and "count filter hits", but thanks for the help.

 

[stormtrooper9091]

Meh. I've been a Firefox user ever since I first heard of it and it never did anything wrong. The previous version was like the plague and I couldn't figure out what was wrong and I was seriously considering moving on, but then an update came and everything is alright and I can't believe I doubted my favourite browser.

The point is, we're living in a cruel soulless corporate world. And since at the end of the day, corporations always win the most you can do is flip them off as an individual and feel better about yourself, because they won't care either way

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

However, the second option is one that no-one wants. Simply put, paying for the content. It seems horrible, what a crazy idea, having to pay to watch things on the internet! But if the websites are having ads blocked, and therefore not gaining enough money to keep hosting/providing for these content creators then they will have to turn to a paywall. The current system is pretty much the best system we could hope for, but a lot of people think "Nah, I can't waste 30 seconds of my precious time to ignore something so that the content I like can be produced!".

Ok and why is that the option that apparently "no-one" wants?
I allready pay for netflix gladly because it offers a great service to me. I would be willing to do the same for youtube, if it would provide me with a service of similar value.

Sure, that may work for something specific like YouTube. However, that then comes with two problems. The fact that some people out there refuse to even pay a dollar or two for certain games or apps, and would rather pirate them, and the fact that it wouldn't just apply to YouTube. Imagine all of the smaller companies and websites. I'm sure Twitch and YouTube could survive without ads with a subscription, but imagine literally any other site. You would have to start paying for all the sites you visit, or else they simply couldn't keep running. It's not just Youtube that survives off of ads.

 

[Sarge034]

Wow, all this talk of adblock and not one single mod action... I guess that one time was one too many, hu escapist? And here I was all set to be like...

Spoiler

For those of you who don't know, Jim Sterling did a video on adblock and encouraged people to have reasonable discussion. Then the mods tore people a new asshole for talking about adblock. The escapist made gaming news for that one, it was marvelous.

OT- How do we get more revenue? Let's drive people to our competitor's browser! What next? Are you going to allow companies to abuse your copyright infringement reporting system to suit their own needs? XD ... Oh. :/

 

[jklinders]

An Adblock topic on the Escapist? That'll go well...

Ahem. And Mozilla's servers crashed because people finally dropped Chrome like the bad habit it is. Good browser but it is being made and controlled by a company that is not our friend in the end.

I can't remember Jim Sterling's episode on the subject, but I don't remember disagreeing with it. I am not bothered by ads as long as they do not affect my browsing experience. I define that as significantly increasing page load time, just about any sound and video that opens up on it's own without me starting a video or in the worst of cases, infecting my PC with a virus (that last is not always the site owner's fault directly, but any script that launches an ad can be hacked to drop a virus in. it's one of the more common avenues of infection these days).

I know ad delivery is important to websites but every now and then it gets out of hand. The Escapist is whitelisted on my browser and the ham handed way the new video client works makes it nigh impossible to view it's video content these days without reloading once or twice. Keep jumping people through those hoops and no one will watch it and fewer will even come. Thankfully the ads on the Escapist these days are pretty innocuous. They were kinda bad at different points.

the ads need to be less invasive and commensurate with the service provided or you won't get any traffic. At the end of the day, the battle with adblock will be about the same as the battle against piracy. the content provider who gives the best and easiest to access service will win.

 

[Amaror]

Sure, that may work for something specific like YouTube. However, that then comes with two problems. The fact that some people out there refuse to even pay a dollar or two for certain games or apps, and would rather pirate them, and the fact that it wouldn't just apply to YouTube. Imagine all of the smaller companies and websites. I'm sure Twitch and YouTube could survive without ads with a subscription, but imagine literally any other site. You would have to start paying for all the sites you visit, or else they simply couldn't keep running. It's not just Youtube that survives off of ads.

I seriously don't really get what your talking about. People are using adblock right now. And yet all those websites you are talking about are still there since there are people that are not using adblock.
So, easy solution, they keep everything like it is now and introduce a subscription service that gets rid of the ads and offers a few more services. Like for example an additional comment section were only paying users can comment (That will most likely be more civil than normal comments since the commenting people will only be people that care enough about youtube to pay for it). So now the honest people that don't want to pay can watch ads, the honest people that don't want to watch ads can pay. The dishonest people will continue to use stuff like adblock but that's like pirates. You can't completely get rid of them, but if you can offer a better service than them they won't be much of a problem.
If steam has taught us anything it's that people are willing to pay for their entertainment as long they get a better or as good service as they get when they pirate it.
Yes this would only work for a few websites, but just because a solution doesn't fix a problem for every possible situation immaginable, doesn't mean that the solution should be dismissed.
Hell Patreon alone proves without a doubt that there are MANY people that are willing to pay for their youtube entertainment.

 

[Ariseishirou]

Watch a 3-minute ad before a 1-minute cat video? Oh, Mr Google, surely you are joking.

 

[BoogieManFL]

Another reason to keep using Firefox, thanks for the heads up, Google.

I'll disable adblock on a site until it throws excessively long commercials (30-45sec+)or has obnoxious ads that are flashy, play sound automatically, or try that bullshit where basically anywhere you click on the website it acts like you clicked on the ad.

If only the advertising morons would take some time to understand what people would find acceptable, instead of essentially acting like malware, and trying to take center stage.

Most of all I hate sites that require an ad to load before you can access what you're actually looking for, when the shitty ad site is too slow and either takes ages to load or just doesn't respond so you just get to sit there and look at a buffering icon. YAY.

Idiots. You TRY to make yourselves hated, so naturally you're succeeding.

 

[infohippie]

Fakku is one of the most well-known and legit hentai sites in the west. One day, they role out a new form of advertisement. This ad causes a small screen to load up in front of a hentai on the first page, you just hit exit and be on your merry way. Ad block users ran into an issue where the ad would not load and the hentai would be unable to easily change pages and the first page you selected would be blank. I noticed that someone in their forums placed a thread asking what was happening with this, he even straight up said "I think my ad-blocker is causing this". Jacob Grady, owner and founder of the website responds with "Yes, we aware that the new ad type causes issues solely for ad-block users. We have our tech team working on it ASAP. Sorry for the inconvenience."

Wow, really? I don't even visit Fakku very much, but thanks to that story I just put Fakku on my adblocker's whitelist. Website owners like that DESERVE the revenue. It's the CDPR approach - treat your audience well and they will return the favour.


Oh yes, and of course I whitelist the Escapist.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Well that's a shitty thing to do. But I'm sure the people who make Ad-Blockers would be able to find away around it.

Honestly if The Escapist could do this they probably would. They ban people for mentioning Ad-Block exists. They banned people for discussing Ad-Block in the comments for a video about discussing Ad-Block. I'm surprised the mods haven't already descended upon this thread to dole out the warnings and so forth.

 

[IceForce]

I'm surprised the mods haven't already descended upon this thread to dole out the warnings and so forth.

A mod has already posted in this thread, and... no warnings, yet, that I can see. I think we're safe.

Wow, all this talk of adblock and not one single mod action... I guess that one time was one too many, hu escapist? And here I was all set to be like...

Spoiler

For those of you who don't know, Jim Sterling did a video on adblock and encouraged people to have reasonable discussion. Then the mods tore people a new asshole for talking about adblock. The escapist made gaming news for that one, it was marvelous.

Many lessons were learned that day, from all involved. I doubt we'll be seeing another repeat of that.

 

[ChaoGuy2006]

I frequently whitelist people on adblock, and I wish I could do the same for individual youtube accounts. But, the adblock I use (AdBlockLatitude) doesn't give me the option, so I try to support creators other ways (watch it on their own website if they have it, etc).

People seem to forget the business practices in real life still apply to digital businesses. Don't keep shoving adverts in people's face, or they won't use your service at all. Yes, you will always get thieves/pirates, but don't screw over your paying customer trying to deal with them. And if you keep screwing up, someone will make an alternative.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I can understand why people use adblocking software. There are legitimate security concerns. Also, some people have to rely on mobile data for their internet, and with restrictive plans like that, you will be frugal and count the megabytes.

 

[Barbas]

Yo, I just wanna add, do not admit to, link to or advocate the use of Ad-blocking software. You can talk about it just fine, just don't do any of those things, because they're against the CoC and we'll have to give out warnings, which always sucks in a thread like this. Whatever your feelings on them, ads bring in the money that basically keeps the site afloat.

EDIT: See this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.882055.22229866] post.

Which reminds me: if one of them auto-plays with sound or expands to cover the page, you should take a screenshot and report them as obtrusive in the Tech Team [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/chat/Tech-Team] group. They do try and get rid of the shite ones, but sadly the ad companies aren't as cooperative as we'd all like them to be.

 

[IceForce]

Yo, I just wanna add, do not admit to, link to or advocate the use of Ad-blocking software.

Uhh, yeah, that's going to present a bit of a problem. Plenty of people in this thread already have talked about their experiences in using ad-blocking software on youtube.

If you start smashing the hammer around left and right, this will end up another repeat of Jim's thread, ie: it will end badly, for everyone.