whyfirefoxisblocked

[mlim]

Plse see these comments on

http://www.whyfirefoxisblocked.com/index1.php

Is using FireFox a crime now ?

[Centauri]

That argument would seem to suggest that it is a crime to leave the room to go to the bathroom when ads appear on TV ......

[felgall]

You could probably get past that block simply by setting the useragent in Firefox to identify itself as Interent Explorer. I don't think that there is anything apart from the user definable useragent field that allows a browser to be specifically identified as Firefox.

In any case it is almost as easy to block ads in all the other browsers that it mentions as it is in Firefox.

[Ferret]

They make the 1 good point that sites that depend on advertising suffer due to ad blocking... but to say it's theft? O_O

Am I stealing when I don't click the ads that I DO see? For the sites that have ads that generate revenue per click, this argument would suggest that I have to click every ad I see in order not to steal from the site owner. (granted I haven't seen one in weeks. >_>)

[felgall]

The site owner chooses to put ads on their site or not. If they don't make enough income from advertising then they need to find another way to make money from their site.

The visitor to the site decides whether to see the ads or not. Most good Firewalls have built in ad blockers for if your browser doesn't.

It is no different from watching TV using a PVR that records the show in advance and plays it back without the ads so that you start watching a three hour show about half an hour after the show starts and finish watching it live.

Those who block the ads are not going to buy the products being advertised regardless so unless you are being paid on a per view basis rather than by click or purchase the blocked ads will not make any difference to your income anyway.

[Ferret]

Right, if they suffer due to adblocking, they need to realize ads are not their key to revenue... rather than block 35% of the population who uses Firefox.

:confused:

[TJ111]

Felgall is right in many regards. Look at the history of how advertising has evolved over the last 15 years.

Commercials on TV has been around for years, but when DVR's like TiVo came out, all the sudden consumers had the choice about whether or not they wanted to watch the commercials. Now DVR's are almost standard from any Cable or Satellite provider. Advertiser's have changed (some) of their marketing strategy revolving around television, with things like product placement and the "This Show/This Segment brought to you by..." methods.

About 10 years ago (essentially) every site had some pop up that popped onto your screen in a new window to advertise something to you. Users found this extremely annoying, and pop-up blocking software become extremely desirable and is now main stream. Advertiser's began developing Flash based ad's, however a lot of their marketing departments didn't understand the fact that flashing a banner black and white saying you won something didn't appeal to consumers.

Firefox comes around, allowing virtually unlimited customization for the end-user. Being open source it allowed the browser to evolve much more rapidly then any other browser in history. It has seen constant increases in market-share since its inception, and there's good reason for that. Web Developer's and Designers love that it is extremely more W3C compliant than the previous standard (IE), and consumer's enjoy the ability to having more secure browsing and significantly more customization options then (essentially) any other browser.

Around the same time (perhaps earlier), Google AdWords started becoming popular. It delivered text-only ad's relevant to the site or email the consumer was browsing. It has since become the most popular way for businesses to advertise online (no proof, just experience).

When was the last time you heard someone complain about getting a virus or spyware after clicking on a flash based ad? Compare that to the last time someone complained about getting a virus after clicking on a Google AdWords ad (or similar, like Yahoo! ads).

A stand-alone programmer (no real Mozilla affiliation) understood this, and developed a plug in that allowed user's to block flash based advertising content. This became very popular in the same way's Pop up Blockers and DVR's did. Another programmer thuoght it would be smart to create a database of blocked ad's, so user's could browse without having to AdBlock every ad. The two plug-ins eventually combined, and now user's have an easy way to browse the internet in a much safer and "cleaner" internet, without being reminded that they are the X visitor to every site.

It should be the goal of every marketer to appeal to it's consumer's in the way they want. As the old adage goes, "the customer is always right". Consumer's should not have to conform to a marketer's strategy, and claiming that this is robbing advertiser's of money and jobs is ridiculous. The only thing losing these companies money and jobs is their inability to evolve with the transforming technology world. Blocking user's using Firefox, instead of changing your outdated business model, can only hurt yourself in the long run.

Wow long post, sorry.
TLDR: Website is extremely wrong.

[Stephen Philbin]

[Moved from "DreamWeaver/Front Page" to "Coffee lounge".]

Yup. You can make Firefox appear to be any other browser and you can make any other browser do the same ad blocking technique.

I choose not to use Firefox so I guess it doesn't really affect me anyway, but that's just stupid. I guess it's just yet another classic case of idiots ranting in a business they know nothing about.

[nshiell]

Adblock Plus is the best thing since sliced bread, end of

[Ixian]

Wow, this entire piece speaks of ignorance or FUD.

"Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers." and blocking everyone who uses a browser is any different? Beyond this many advertisements are forced upon the content owners and developers with the threat that using css to hide it will result in them being banned, it's not their "right to show ads" there but someone else mandating that they show ads.

"Millions of hard working people are being robbed of their time and effort by this type of software." really... there's millions of people working hard to make cheap banner ads that tick off people visiting the site... I have beyond a hard time believing this statement.

Since revenue is generated by click-through, and I highly doubt anyone who wants to block all those ads would suddenly start clicking them if they were forced to view them, this whole thing is pointless and stupid. If ad-block completely blocks the ads from being sent then the worst thing that can be legitimately said about it is it saves the site bandwidth by not wasting time sending ads to those who don't want to see them.

"If you are offended by the Mozilla Corporation's endorsement of dishonesty please contact the Mozilla Foundation and ask them to stop empowering internet theft." however they provide no way I can find to contact them if you find their dishonesty offensive. Hmm... internet theft, blocking people access to information in the public domain, sounds like the blockers better fit the shoe for internet theft if you take it to mean stealing the net from someone else.

This whole thing reeks of some sort of red scare/witchhunt based on lies and misinformation and it wouldn't surprise me to learn M$ has some hand in this whole fiasco given it's whole FUD campaign and it losing market share to FF. Going on a warpath to try and make people think a legit browser is illegal to use and harmful to the net.

[JPnyc]

Well speaking as the administrator of many such sites, yes it is theft. If you are not willing to endure the advertisements on a free forum, find a forum that has paid memberships, and you will not find any ads, or precious few.

People who express indignation at this notion simply have no clue what it costs to host and maintain websites and forums.

[Ixian]

With a business net connection (note we're not a business, just use enough bandwidth that a normal connection is not enough), and running a personal in house server, I'd say I have a decent idea what it costs. While we don't actually host a site available for outside browsing, but the whole VPN set up and amount of bandwidth usage is comparable to an average site, and actualy tops the bandwidth usage of an online store I worked at for a while. This whole thing is paid for out of pocket since we don't run a site to put ads up on.

I will admit a forum, especially a popular one will take more bandwidth and cost more, but to block 35% of the people just because they have the ability to not see ads is something I can't agree with. I completely condone blocking intrusive ads, they ruin the browsing experience and probably only get clicked on by accident. I also strongly support Google Ad-words since they're based on the site you're viewing and are non-intrusive. I click on Google Ad-words often, the one time I clicked on an intrusive ad was an accident when I was trying to click the link next to it and got bumped by a less-than-sober roommate.

I've started regularly shopping at 3 places I only found because of Google Ad-words. I've never visited a site linked in an intrusive ad except the one time mentioned above.

I'm in favor of ads done the right way, but the reason why we have ad-block is because people aren't doing them the right way. Just like flash based sites, the ones done the right way are simply amazing, but there seems to be a few hundred bad ones for every good one.

I think it's also fair to assume that many people posting here will have, like me, researched the cost of hosting a site for their clients at some point in time. There's probably plenty of people like me who are angry/upset/irritated at this with a very good clue about what it costs.

[JPnyc]

Unless your site is getting a couple hundred thousand views a day, it's not comparable to what it costs to maintain this site. Beyond that, a forum as you've mentioned, requires much more hassle and cost, and storage space, than a normal site. Beyond that, we don't pay for hosting, we host our own sites, which means servers, air-conditioned rooms, and an IT department to take care of them, and all these cost money.

[felgall]

What you see in your browser is your choice. It is no more theft to have your browser strip the ads out of the page (and any browser or firewall can do that for you) than it is to go and make yourself a sandwich instead of staying glued to the TV while the ads are on. Those who strip the ads from the web page are a small portion of the much larger group who will never click on the ads in any case.

If you can't make sufficient income from the small percentage who view and click on the ads to finance the site then you need to rethink how you are financing the site.

It is your right to display ads on your site if you want to.

It is your visitor's right to remove all the ads from web pages they view if they want to. Probably the easiest way for most people is to turn on the ad blocker in their firewall.

[JPnyc]

Just as it's the web publishers right to block whomever they choose.

[TJ111]

Web users can block whatever content they choose. If this angers site owners, they can block whatever browsers they choose (although it is very easy to workaround). However the nature of the internet is that there are many options for users to choose from that all blocking a whole group of people does is lose traffic for your site. If you want to turn a profit off of a website via ads, blocking a whole user base isn't a very logical business model.

Google went from an unheard of company to one of the largest internet based businesses (yes, they are a business) in only a matter of years, and they didn't do it by making it's users conform to their standards.

[boxxertrumps]

I either don't have adblock installed, or have it disabled for the forums i have bookmarked...
I never click on any ads. MAYBE if it's an ebay auction for something like a bat`leth, but even that's a stretch.
Ewww, MS visual studio...

I like this site, dynamicdrive, QCF.ca and 7chon... i'd be willing to offer a hundred or two to each. no paypal account/debit card... i should get on acquiring those.

Anyways, the people who choose to hide the ads are the people who most likely wouldn't click on them in the first place. It's not stealing.

But the above statements do not negate the reality that you are entitled to restrict access to your private server, for whatever reason you choose. it's YOUR bandwidth, YOUR server and YOUR website.

[JPnyc]

Web users can block whatever content they choose. If this angers site owners, they can block whatever browsers they choose (although it is very easy to workaround). However the nature of the internet is that there are many options for users to choose from that all blocking a whole group of people does is lose traffic for your site. If you want to turn a profit off of a website via ads, blocking a whole user base isn't a very logical business model.

Google went from an unheard of company to one of the largest internet based businesses (yes, they are a business) in only a matter of years, and they didn't do it by making it's users conform to their standards.
If the traffic being blocked is blocking ads, and the site in question is supported by ads, then it's very likely that the traffic that is lost would not be considered important traffic to that site. They're just eating up bandwidth, essentially.

I don't think most of you have any idea of the amount of sites that you use every day which would be lost if this practice became the norm. It's nice that some of you would be willing to buy a membership to a site such as this, but I beg you to accept that this is not at all common place.

There is no way that sites such as this would survive using paid memberships, nor is there another alternative to advertising revenue which would keep them afloat. They would simply be gone.

[drhowarddrfine]

otoh, the people who use AdBlocker probably don't look at the ads anyway. Nor would they click on them. In my own restaurant business, I know most of my ads are thrown away and I only get a response of 2-4% no matter how successful the campaign is.

I would venture to say most people don't run AdBlocker. I don't because I'm afraid I might miss something. I really haven't. Out of every hundred ads I see I only look at 2 to 4 of them.....hmmm.

[felgall]

Just as it's the web publishers right to block whomever they choose.

Definitely.

Of course such blocks will usually either have no affect on income or will result in income being reduced due to the blocked people telling their friends who are not blocked and who would see the ads (and possibly click on them) about how bad the site is for blocking them and convincing them to stop visiting it. The only situation where it may possibly save money is if you have a low bandwidth account and those who you are blocking would otherwise push you over the bandwidth limit.

[NogDog]

Personally, I suspect that site is mainly doing two things:

1. Increasing the number of people who have the AdBlock plug-in installed on Firefox.

2. Getting that site a lot of link traffic, increasing its search ranking as well as any sites it links to, along with whatever the little hidden flash object in the top right corner is doing to track usage or something. (Any Flash pros here who can reverse-engineer it and tell us what it's doing?)

[JPnyc]

otoh, the people who use AdBlocker probably don't look at the ads anyway. Nor would they click on them. In my own restaurant business, I know most of my ads are thrown away and I only get a response of 2-4% no matter how successful the campaign is.

I would venture to say most people don't run AdBlocker. I don't because I'm afraid I might miss something. I really haven't. Out of every hundred ads I see I only look at 2 to 4 of them.....hmmm.
Actually, it wouldn't matter if they looked at them or clicked on them at all. It would only matter that the ads were displayed.

[felgall]

Most ads these days are pay per click or pay per purchase. Pay per view ads are becoming very rare because there is no way to tell if people actually see them. They may be at the bottom of the page and the person doesn't scroll down that far or their firewall may be hiding the ad from the browser. In both those instances the ad is downloaded but never seen.

I would install an ad blocker in IE for certain if I ever really used that browser and if the firewall wasn't already capable of removing the ads before they get to IE since IE tends to display ads in a more annoying way than other browsers do. A simple userscript that removes all images and iframes of set sizes would take care of most ads and userscripts can be as easily installed in IE with the IE7Pro plugin as they can in Firefox with Greasemonkey.

[Ixian]

Ads displayed only matter if the site makes money based on each impression, since people aren't going to click them willingly if they wanted to block them in the first place. And even then if Ad-block downloads the ad but just doesn't display them it'd still get recorded as an impression, granted now it's the ad company paying for nothing instead of the site owner not having the ad displayed.

Really it looks like you'd take the side of someone who tracks all their hits then blocks every single IP that doesn't click on the ads because they're "stealing" from the site. Same thing for people who just record TV shows so that they can use commercial skip on it, should the cable companies hunt down and block those people because they're "stealing" the shows? The ads weren't displayed which is all that matters, and I know plenty of people who do this (around 10 times as many people as I know with ad-block, so yeah, a significant amount). Maybe stores should charge you a cover fee, since it takes so much to run those lights and the produce coolers, and the cash registers. Heck it costs them to even charge you money, maybe they should all raise their prices to cover those costs, or maybe the should make you buy stuff you don't want to cover it (like clicking ads you don't want to see).

I don't have anything against people who make some money off ads so long as they use non-invasive ones, though I do believe that if you can't afford a non-forum site without ads on the level that you *must* block people who don't look at your ads you really don't belong online.

Our net connection costs a few hundred per month (guess what type of connection it is), we have no site, no ads. We run a vent server for 2 guilds in WoW and a large alliance in EvE online, which also acts as a 3TB file server for game saves, replays, and is used as a dedicated host as needed. All this is provided for no charge and ad free to everyone who has access to it, I don't even know most (~98%) of them (I'm MMO free so no WoW or EvE online, the entire vent side means nothing to me, cept the 2-3 hours/week that my brother gets on and I can actually chat to him). I didn't quit my day job in the hopes that charging people or making them see ads would support my lifestyle. I personally pay over $100 a month in just the net connection to provide some services to complete strangers because some of my friends use it too, I know quite well what sites cost to maintain and run, and I still disagree with blocking people for not viewing your ads.

Good forums may very well cost more than this, but your average web site is going to cost pocket change to run by comparison, and invasive ads are not the way to make this pocket change.

[Ferret]

No Script is my favorite Firefox extension. I can go as far as blocking the addresses of ad sites so I'm getting out the root of the ads rather than just the offspring images. ie. I block www.googlesyndication.com and will never ever see a google based ad on any site. I do the same for doubleclick.net and the root of every ad I see that's from an external source. The result is I don't even download the files.

[JPnyc]

Precisely, and most Internet publishing corporations function based on ad impressions, not clicks. Working based off clicks is for small sites.

Really it looks like you'd take the side of someone who tracks all their hits then blocks every single IP that doesn't click on the ads because they're "stealing" from the site.

I don't know where you got the above idea from. Nothing alluding to that has even been mentioned. For the record, we block no browsers at all. My function here is just to explain how the Internet publishing business works.

Even sites like the experts exchange, which is a paid membership site, has advertising on it.

I don't have anything against people who make some money off ads so long as they use non-invasive ones, though I do believe that if you can't afford a non-forum site without ads on the level that you *must* block people who don't look at your ads you really don't belong online.

What would be their motivation? Obviously, if they make their money by selling some other product, well that's an entirely different scenario. But if you're suggesting that a corporation should maintain an air-conditioned room full of servers and an IT department, entirely at their own expense, just for the heck of it, then I don't know where you're coming from.

[TJ111]

But if you're suggesting that a corporation should maintain an air-conditioned room full of servers and an IT department, entirely at their own expense, just for the heck of it, then I don't know where you're coming from.

My friend works at Lockheed Martin, and they do it :p .

But seriously, I understand that websites such as this one rely on ad revenue to keep them afloat. I'm glad your not planning on blocking an entire browser (especially one so popular for web developers). I do, however, believe there are alternative to flash based ads.
The majority of the ads on this site don't get blocked by adblock, as they are image based. I don't mind image based ads nearly as much, because they aren't flashing or blinking or talking to me. There's also mediums such as google adwords that are even less intrusive to a website. Or you could take the facebook approach and post links to sponser companies sporadically throughout your new posts feed (facebook is a little overkill on that one), which if done properly isn't all that intrusive and I'd imagine would generate a healthy amount of clicks.

I love the site, love what your doing, and am not trying to play the devils advocate. I'm just pointing out the alternatives to flash based ad's on a website.

[JPnyc]

We have very little to say about the ads. The way the Internet publishing business works is this: you have a popular site, one with a subject matter that appeals to a particular advertiser. That advertiser contacts you about putting their ads on your site. The advertiser has entire control over the ad, the look and the medium used are determined entirely by them.

Most of the sites that I use, have flash-based ads

[Ixian]

What would be their motivation? Obviously, if they make their money by selling some other product, well that's an entirely different scenario. But if you're suggesting that a corporation should maintain an air-conditioned room full of servers and an IT department, entirely at their own expense, just for the heck of it, then I don't know where you're coming from.
snipped...

How many corporations do you know of with publicly owned stock maintain a web presence that doesn't sell their product or service? How many of these corps just maintain a web presence for kicks and giggles? A corporations web presence is it's own gigantic ad selling you their product or service because publicly owned companies are required to make money (no I can't quote the law on it, but there is something on the books requiring publicly owned corps to show a ROI on their product or service, else they get charged with bad business practices and get audited to make sure they're not just stealing the money away for themselves). They shouldn't be loading up their own ad with ads for other companies unless they're partnered with them. I can see IBM having an ad for some OS to run on their mainframes, I can't see IBM having an ad for Mac servers.

I'll admit the private stock corps probably need some help covering their costs if they're crazy enough to set up their own IT department with AC'd servers, but private stock companies are generally small enough that they'd be better off just spending $5/month having one of the bigger hosting services host their site. Private stock corps are however an entirely different world than normal corps, and banks and investors can still claim your property if your privately owned corp goes under should you make bad choices.

In short, anyone who sets up a corporation with other peoples investments, puts together an IT team, server, and net connection that they can't pay for without intrusive ads to the extent that they must block everyone who even has the ability to ignore the ads does not deserve to be in business using other peoples money. This begs the questions "what are you doing with the investments?" and "do you even have the money to be doing what you're doing?" The second one looks like a clear cut no.

Hmm... Maybe you meant company, even then I stand by my statements about not setting up an IT department you can't maintain without ads. What happens if, even with you blocking everyone who doesn't see them, the ad company decides it's ROI isn't big enough and drops you? Lay-offs and downsizing? Or do you keep on trucking with an IT department you really couldn't afford to have?

The whole idea of companies and corporations *needing* those ad revenues is silly at best. If they really *need* that money for IT they're a bad business being poorly managed and I'd get any money of mine as far away from them as I can.

[Ferret]

the only ads I've not been able to block are the ones embedded in the content swf itself... by blocking that you block the thing you're trying to look at. If people REALLY need to display ads, that's one method. Oh and I've recently started using Opera... it pretends to be IE, but still blocks whatever I tell it to. :P

[JPnyc]

I don't think you're understanding. That is the business of Internet publishing. You're speaking of the advertisements as though they are just a way of offsetting hosting costs. That is not the case. That is our business. That is where 80% of the company's revenue comes from. We don't sell a product, and we are publicly owned.

What happens if everyone starts blocking the ads you ask? The sites are gone, lock, stock and barrel, and the company is out of business, or would be forced to move into a different avenue. But either way, our sites, such as this one, would no longer exist.

Keep in mind, there is no other product involved here. In the business of Internet publishing, there is only one source of revenue, advertising.

[felgall]

It is no different from free to air TV which also earns its income exclusively from the advertising it sells.

Advertisers buy advertising in the hope/knowledge that it will increase their sales by significantly more than the advertising costs them.

There is no way of controlling whether any particular viewer (whether of tv or a web page) will actually see the ad or act on it if they do. The advertiser relies on the percentage of people who do act on it being high enough to be worthwhile.

[JPnyc]

There is a difference. The TV station displays the ad, no matter what. If they don't display it, due to some technical difficulty on their part, the advertiser is not charged for that ad.

If you're not there to see it, or have changed the channel, that's out of their control. But you don't have a means of preventing the station from airing that ad. If you did, the 2 situations would be analogous.

[Mr Initial Man]

What happens if everyone starts blocking the ads you ask? The sites are gone, lock, stock and barrel, and the company is out of business, or would be forced to move into a different avenue. But either way, our sites, such as this one, would no longer exist.

Does anyone here remember a forum provider called InsideTheWeb? It had free forums, which were HUGELY popular. But when web advertising stopped being so profitable, well...

Let's just say there's a LOT of forum links out there that don't go anywhere anymore.

JPnyc, I am in full agreement with you.

P.S. How much DOES it cost to run these forums?

[felgall]

There is a difference. The TV station displays the ad, no matter what. If they don't display it, due to some technical difficulty on their part, the advertiser is not charged for that ad.

If you're not there to see it, or have changed the channel, that's out of their control. But you don't have a means of preventing the station from airing that ad. If you did, the 2 situations would be analogous.

So you just set up your PVR to record the show and play it back without the ads. So the overall result is that you start watching the show slightly later and finish watching it around the same time (or slightly later if there are not as many ads to be stripped out as you thought). You haven't prevented them broadcasting the ads, you have just blocked them from appearing on your TV.

Sounds like a very similar situation to what you can do with web ads to me.

(Just to make it clear where i stand, most of my web income comes from advertising and so I want people to see the ads and click on them but those people who block the ads completely are never going to click on them anyway. AdSense reports about 1/3 the page views that my logs show for the pages I have ads on and so presumably the other 2/3 of visitors are not seeing the ads for one reason or another. There is no way to stop peole blocking ads though, you just have to find a different way to finance things if advertising doesn't work any more for you.)

[EricG1793]

I'm confused, WHERE is Firefox blocked? :confused: What's this about ad blocking? I get ads in Firefox. Are we talking about pop-up ads, or ads integrated in the website? I'm confused....

[Ferret]

I'm confused, WHERE is Firefox blocked? :confused: What's this about ad blocking? I get ads in Firefox. Are we talking about pop-up ads, or ads integrated in the website? I'm confused....


With the adblock extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10

Every time you see an image-based ad, you can right click and select to block the source. With the use of wildcards (*), you can knock out all the major ad publishers within a week of a small amount of diligence.

[felgall]

With other browsers it might take you eight or nine days to achieve the same result.

[JPnyc]

So you just set up your PVR to record the show and play it back without the ads. So the overall result is that you start watching the show slightly later and finish watching it around the same time (or slightly later if there are not as many ads to be stripped out as you thought). You haven't prevented them broadcasting the ads, you have just blocked them from appearing on your TV.

Sounds like a very similar situation to what you can do with web ads to me.

(Just to make it clear where i stand, most of my web income comes from advertising and so I want people to see the ads and click on them but those people who block the ads completely are never going to click on them anyway. AdSense reports about 1/3 the page views that my logs show for the pages I have ads on and so presumably the other 2/3 of visitors are not seeing the ads for one reason or another. There is no way to stop peole blocking ads though, you just have to find a different way to finance things if advertising doesn't work any more for you.)
Just to clarify, it is not the same. I will explain. Just like a television station earns revenue with each airing of an advertisement, so do Internet publishers such as Jupitermedia. In this scenario you outlined the ad is being aired. Therefore the station loses nothing. Whether or not you watch it is irrelevant. Similarly, clicks are also irrelevant. Clicks have no bearing on our business.

[felgall]

With a firewall stripping the ads out of web pages as they are downloaded the ads are still being served by the advertiser and no one has any way of telling that the ads are being removed before the web page is displayed - exactly the same as when you strip ads from a TV show as you play it back from your PVR.

In both cases the ads are "aired", in both cases they are removed before being seen.

[JPnyc]

If the firewall is stripping out the ad before the page is displayed, how is the ad still served? I'm not sure about all browsers means of ad blocking, but I believe devices like proxomitron strip the code, so the call to the ad server would never be made and no ad load would be counted off.

[scragar]

I use an array of browsers, konqueror, flock, firefox and lynx often, with occasional use of IE via wine(for sites that are IE only, although I always have activeX and javascript completely disabled for security)...

since I can block adverts using flock and konqueror, and only text based averts are shown in lynx doesn't that mean that you have to block almost anything I can use to view your sites? personally I use adblock plus, and the put in exceptions based on the requirement(sites I like to support get exception, as do sites like isohunt that need the money to offer a great service). I would love to suport sites like this, but if someone offers a big flashing advert across the top of the page with some annoying sound then it get's instantly blocked, no further consideration required.

PS. I'm also curious as to how much these forums require to maintain...

[JPnyc]

We don't block any browsers at all. We were discussing this philosophically, because apparently some other sites do block certain browsers. We don't, and I doubt we ever will.

It would not be possible to give you a figure regarding maintenance costs for this one site. We're a multinational corporation with several air-conditioned roomfulls of servers, and full IT staff, which publishes about 80 sites (don't quote me on the number it keeps growing all the time).

[aaron.martinas]

interesting read, that website! i'm somewhat torn on my stance -- i fully understand the necessity for such measures considering how popular FF is becoming, and how they definitly flaunt AdBlock plus.

the first time i installed that extention, i was already using a custom hosts file to do a lot of my ad blocking. all i wanted adblock to do was be able to pick up the crumbs at my discretion. i will certainly admit it seems that they went too far by creating an automatic update feature to more aggressively block ads.

the extention itself i feel is warrented.. who are you to say what i cant do with my computer, as it pertains to me and my computer solely? but providing all the keys i feel is pushing too much of an agenda. malware/spyware sites excluded, however, but who will monitor the monitors?

[JPnyc]

It is a drastic step but I guess the site owners feel that they're losing very little by blocking those who block their ads. Every site is a give and take situation in one way or other, they have the right to block those who only wish to take.

[Stephen Philbin]

The folks that have a blanket ban on Firefox just sound like lunatics to me. Rabid victims of the evil FUD monster. I can understand their need to generate revenue via advertising, but this just seems like going way too far.

Perhaps they sound crazy to me because I'm thinking from the perspective of how I choose to block ads, perhaps not. All that "Congratulations! You're our 999,999th visitor!" crap that vibrates on the screen gets smacked down instantly, but I don't actually block all that much advertising. As a matter of fact, I block fewer things now than I ever used to. I only really block what I consider to be "dirty" ads. I've certainly never blocked ads from this place, but that's because sometimes the adverts are about something I might be interested in.

The only advert from this place I've been tempted to block is that Sitepal crap. That one advert by its self has the CPU on my poor ickle laptop going constantly at least 75%. I haven't blocked it, though, for two reasons.

1) I don't think I can block just that one advert.

2) I like to make it say what an utterly worthless waste of development time it was and how it could have been much better spent on making something more than a crappy marketing gimmick.

[Mr Initial Man]

"fud"?

[drhowarddrfine]

Fear Uncertainty Doubt. What Microsoft does to vendors and and customers.

[firasg]

this whole argument with content being provided for "free" being on the verge of extinction, and all those grim scenarios with subscription based forums and so on is completely flawed.

Yes, a lot of sites will disappear, and that's really a good thing. I remember back in the days of dialup, 11-12 years ago, online ads were nonexistant and yet information was abundant and as I recall far more easy to get to. (less crap, less redundancy, more relevant results).

There will always be someone willing to share information for free, actually that was the whole internet idea before beeing hijacked by users primarily focused on making an easy buck than sharing information for the benefit of community.

Anyone charging for information deserves to be thrown out of the picture.

[JPnyc]

I'm having a difficult time deciding whether or not you're really as misinformed as you appear, or, if for the sake of some vicarious thrill you decided to represent the polar opposite of the truth with each sentence.

Make an easy buck? That sentence makes it quite clear you have absolutely not one mote of an idea what is required to run a forum like this, let alone 30 of them. The bandwidth and storage alone for 30 forums would break you, unless you are independently wealthy.

So in your scenario of this free information for all Internet, do the hosting companies also donate their services? What about the Internet service providers should you choose to host your own site? And the server I suppose this is donated as well?

And what about those that maintain the sites? Do you really think you could maintain all aspects of 30 forums in your spare time? This includes maintaining the databases, the servers, answering user issues from literally several hundred thousand active users, reading posts, deleting spam, answering questions from moderators, performing maintenance, upgrading/patching software?

If the above argument is "flawed" as you call it, we'll need to come up with a new word to describe yours.

[Ferret]

There is, unfortunately, those who do want to make an easy buck, though. (most eBook retailers, spammers, etc.)

People, like those who run this forum, however, just want to make a living off doing things they enjoy... which may be making information available. Did you know Wikipedia has 5 full time employees? Even that, which appears on the surface to be the pinnacle of free information, requires paid employees. Advertisements are one practical way of getting funding for such endeavors. (though Wikipedia is funded through donations.) Being annoyed by an ad is not nearly as bad as being annoyed by lack of available information cause it's not cost effective to maintain the sources.

That said, I am an avid ad blocker.

[Mr Initial Man]

Just... one thing I noticed about that page... I don't think it exactly blocks FIREFOX...

[EricG1793]

That website was a sample showing what the message looked like. That wasn't a sight that was blocking Firefox; it's a sample of the message sites that DO block Firefox give.

[JPnyc]

Not a very effective approach, however, blocking a browser. When it comes to ad blocking, Firefox is but a drop in the bucket. Pretty much every modern browser and firewall has banner blocking capability, not to mention the standalone blockers. A more effective approach would be tracking calls to the ad server and when they don't occur, don't deliver the page to that user.

[felgall]

If you really want to block ads you do it in the firewall and then none of the browsers on your computer will even know that there were ads in the page.