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[nothingwitty]

It ads a spiffy little tab that allows you to block ads from loading on a web site.  

https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&version=1.0&os=Windows&id=10

This poses an interesting question to the future of the internet, if you ask me.

Pop-ups are one thing, because they're designed to be obnoxious... but what about your standard, basic ads that are displayed on most high-traffic sites.

Tons of sites are ad supported, but if programs like this prevent those ads from being shown, then advertisers will stop paying for space... and then the internet goes away.

But, then, on the other side of things... you should have the right to look at and buy only the things you WANT to look at and buy... so is this "Adblock" really such a bad thing?

What do you guys think?

Personally, I don't give a care.  I love this thing, and I'm glad I discovered it.  Sites like Fileplanet and IGN piss me off to no end with their endless stream of ads for crappy video games I don't want to play.  Future of the internet?  I'll burn that bridge when I come to it!

[thehoopiestfrood]

That is my favourite add on of all time, but I too did ask about that on another site - if my blocking their ads would affect them badly. So I don't know. It makes browsing some sites a hell of a lot easier though.

[est]

... and then the internet goes away.

no it won't.

we had the internet & decent internet sites before advertising, and we'll still have them if advertisers pull the plug.

[c1utch]

i've used adblocker plugin, as well as many others like tabbrowser prefrences, disabling targets, downTHEMall (neveractually used), aautomarks, colorzilla, HTML Validator (tidy), and preferential.


As for popups, I don't buy that the internet will "go away" if ads are blocked,  Tivo hasn't done that to television, iPods won't drop off the face of the planet the moment somthing better for cheaper comes out, and P2P isn't the end of the music industry

Honestly, the fact that this much goes into blocking ads just means that popups will deteriorate, and in it's place will come RSS ads, or those annoying-as-hell hotlink style ads you see at places like tom's hardware.

Theres no way somthing that has international usage will stop because we hate ads.  If anything, it'll just be a bit more expensive to host a server, but with donations and server costs dropping, its not that much of a problem.  

The internet is about evolution and change, noone can make us looks at their ads, and frankly I don't want to.

[nothingwitty]

I was exaggerating...

[NetramE]

Also, with adblock you get to choose what you block.  Firefox blocks popups on its own, and then you can just block the ads you think are especially annoying.  Or, you could just not block ads on the sites you feel like supporting.  I'm not sure how ads work on all sites though, is it per view, or per click?  If it is per click and you weren't going to click the ad anyway, it shouldn't affect anything.

-Marten

[Hado-Ken]

I downloaded Adblock a while ago and I don't know if I wasn't using it correctly but it sucked, you could only block animated ads and that's not use to me.

[Areckahn]

Personaly, I'd rather not have adblock installed, as long as ads aren't intrusive, I have no objection to showing them.
Its not like I never ever click them either.

[Druid]

I don't mind static ads, but the flash and gif ads got to be too much. I hated to do it since I want to support the sites I like, but the ads were causing my machine to crawl and were just going over the intrusive edge. It was mainly the flash ads on techreport.com, the intellitext on Tom's Hardware, and those dumb shoot the whatever ones.

The way I think the ads work is advertisers pay the site for a block of space. The fee is dependant on how much traffic the site gets, so blocking them shouldn't hurt the site persay.

Only a few people are going to take the time to download the plugin and use it, so the vast majority of people surfing the Internet are going to be exposed to the ads anyway. Just like me refusing to shop at Wal-Mart. 99% of the population does, so they coundn't care less if I do or not.

[Hado-Ken]

It's also annoying when you're playing a flash game and you have a little distracting 'Adblock' tab at the bottom. I find Adblock gets in the way.