<story><title>Use of Ad-Blocking Software Rises by 30% Worldwide</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/technology/ad-blocking-internet.html?mabReward=A3&amp;recp=0&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;region=CColumn&amp;module=Recommendation&amp;src=rechp&amp;WT.nav=RecEngine&amp;_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikestew</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I should mention that we&amp;#x27;ve tried the usual stuff -- subscription service to remove ads. Asking our users nicely to add our site to their whitelist, etc. Both of these have had minuscule impact.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There was a time that might have worked. It would have worked with me, anyway. A time when others were using ad blockers, but I had an attitude of &amp;quot;meh, they gotta pay the bills&amp;quot;. I might pay a little money to turn off the ads, and were I to use an ad blocker I might whitelist a site or two.&lt;p&gt;But a threshold was crossed. I can&amp;#x27;t tell you what that threshold looks like, or name any particular event that set me off. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s the malware, maybe it&amp;#x27;s the jiggling belly fat ads, auto-play videos, I dunno. But at some point I said &amp;quot;enough&amp;quot;, and I quit giving a shit about anything to do with that industry. The well has been so poisoned that I don&amp;#x27;t care about finding an antidote anymore. In general, I don&amp;#x27;t care if websites go under. The poisoned well metaphor breaks down in that I can&amp;#x27;t do without water, but I can sure as hell do without most of the ad-laden websites out there. I&amp;#x27;ll miss them, but not enough to be bothered to expend even the minimal effort to whitelist as site.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want to be that person. I want to be empathetic to at least the small content producers just trying to scrape a few bucks. But I&amp;#x27;ve been worn down, and not in the way the advertising industry wished I had been worn down. No, I&amp;#x27;m worn down such that it&amp;#x27;s just easier to run an ad blocker and quit caring. And it&amp;#x27;s unfortunate that companies like yours get caught in all of it.</text></item><item><author>legohead</author><text>When the user adblock percentage of our website hit 30%, we decided to try out anti-adblock solutions.&lt;p&gt;We worked with a company that used various tricks to get around the adblock protection, and then serve ads.  This was a great success, at first.  Eventually our users started notifying adblock[1], and adblock included rules to block the new ads on our site.  Then we contacted our vendor, who gave us a software update to circumvent the new adblock rules.&lt;p&gt;This went on, until adblock enabled the nuclear option and blocked all ajax requests on our site.  This effectively broke our site for anyone using adblock.  So we caved in, took out the software, and begged for mercy from adblock.  The rule was taken out, and we are back to losing 30% of our ad revenue.&lt;p&gt;I should mention that we&amp;#x27;ve tried the usual stuff -- subscription service to remove ads.  Asking our users nicely to add our site to their whitelist, etc.  Both of these have had minuscule impact.&lt;p&gt;[1] When I say &amp;quot;adblock did X&amp;quot;, I really mean the caretakers of the &amp;quot;rule lists&amp;quot;, which the various adblocking engines use in their browser extensions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>e40</author><text>Bing-fucking-go.&lt;p&gt;Until advertisers understand and embrace this, the people that use adblockers will never relent.  There is one, let me repeat, one website that I disable adblocking on: reddit.com.  I&amp;#x27;ve never been abused by them, and I don&amp;#x27;t regret that choice.  Every other time I&amp;#x27;ve temporarily relented, I immediately regretted it and blocked them again.</text></comment>
<story><title>Use of Ad-Blocking Software Rises by 30% Worldwide</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/technology/ad-blocking-internet.html?mabReward=A3&amp;recp=0&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;region=CColumn&amp;module=Recommendation&amp;src=rechp&amp;WT.nav=RecEngine&amp;_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikestew</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I should mention that we&amp;#x27;ve tried the usual stuff -- subscription service to remove ads. Asking our users nicely to add our site to their whitelist, etc. Both of these have had minuscule impact.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There was a time that might have worked. It would have worked with me, anyway. A time when others were using ad blockers, but I had an attitude of &amp;quot;meh, they gotta pay the bills&amp;quot;. I might pay a little money to turn off the ads, and were I to use an ad blocker I might whitelist a site or two.&lt;p&gt;But a threshold was crossed. I can&amp;#x27;t tell you what that threshold looks like, or name any particular event that set me off. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s the malware, maybe it&amp;#x27;s the jiggling belly fat ads, auto-play videos, I dunno. But at some point I said &amp;quot;enough&amp;quot;, and I quit giving a shit about anything to do with that industry. The well has been so poisoned that I don&amp;#x27;t care about finding an antidote anymore. In general, I don&amp;#x27;t care if websites go under. The poisoned well metaphor breaks down in that I can&amp;#x27;t do without water, but I can sure as hell do without most of the ad-laden websites out there. I&amp;#x27;ll miss them, but not enough to be bothered to expend even the minimal effort to whitelist as site.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want to be that person. I want to be empathetic to at least the small content producers just trying to scrape a few bucks. But I&amp;#x27;ve been worn down, and not in the way the advertising industry wished I had been worn down. No, I&amp;#x27;m worn down such that it&amp;#x27;s just easier to run an ad blocker and quit caring. And it&amp;#x27;s unfortunate that companies like yours get caught in all of it.</text></item><item><author>legohead</author><text>When the user adblock percentage of our website hit 30%, we decided to try out anti-adblock solutions.&lt;p&gt;We worked with a company that used various tricks to get around the adblock protection, and then serve ads.  This was a great success, at first.  Eventually our users started notifying adblock[1], and adblock included rules to block the new ads on our site.  Then we contacted our vendor, who gave us a software update to circumvent the new adblock rules.&lt;p&gt;This went on, until adblock enabled the nuclear option and blocked all ajax requests on our site.  This effectively broke our site for anyone using adblock.  So we caved in, took out the software, and begged for mercy from adblock.  The rule was taken out, and we are back to losing 30% of our ad revenue.&lt;p&gt;I should mention that we&amp;#x27;ve tried the usual stuff -- subscription service to remove ads.  Asking our users nicely to add our site to their whitelist, etc.  Both of these have had minuscule impact.&lt;p&gt;[1] When I say &amp;quot;adblock did X&amp;quot;, I really mean the caretakers of the &amp;quot;rule lists&amp;quot;, which the various adblocking engines use in their browser extensions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>devopsproject</author><text>I blocked ads on pc after getting infected.&lt;p&gt;I blocked ads on mobile devices when they started buzzing my phone, sending me the the play store, giving me popups, etc.&lt;p&gt;now I block everything on all my devices using pi-hole</text></comment>