Stop, Thief! Why Using an Ad Blocker Is Stealing

[McHenryB]

Whatever your personal opinion may be, it has been determined in a court of law that ad blocking is not illegal. Therefore it is a libel to accuse people who use ad blockers of being thieves. Say they are immoral by all means - that's not a crime. But accusing people of commiting a crime when they are not is offensive (and pretty stupid).

 

[truegenius]

no one said that that person is a criminal, they just said blocking ads is stealing, and what is being stolen you may ask ? its ad revenue which they will use to provide you more quality service and better experience
and who gets the stolen money ? no one, it just get wasted ( just like someone bought something to sell at a profit but sold it at same price thus no profit but loss due to efforts that it took to buy store display and sell it )

only part that i did't like in article is where they said that that popup which covers full screen and audio video ads , these types of ads will annoy because they distract us completely and make us to take some action to remove them and people may use adblocker due to such ads. thoguh google provide ad reviewing so that publisher can view what ad will get served to users
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/82503?hl=en
btw toms forum is adfree and from a long time ( after they changed the theme/graphics of site )

and i found it amusing that only 6 clicks get obtained from 10000 ads, i think i click on 1 ad from every 10 ads i see, looks like those 6 clicks are my contribution 😛

btw looking at the replies and vote up and vote down to those replies, i think toms got an idea that those who blacklist in adblockers will use it anyway ( its like these people are saying "i will [SMILE AT] you but won't pay [ANYTHING]" ), amd looks like 90% of peeps are blocking, so to increase profit there is only.one way left for toms
that is detect users who have blacklisted then redirect these users to a subscription page to sign in and pay subscription money for ad free experience or tell them to whitelist to continue browsing
if toms peeps looses these 90% users then they will need to invest 90% less time to maintain their infrastructure 90% less server load , thus 90% less investment and profit will remain same ( that is from those 10% users ) this way they can concentrate more on those who deserve.

btw that,awkward moment when you want to down vote but mistakenly clicked on ip vote button and now you can't down vote now ( i wanted to down vote a comemt by mistakely upvoted it )

another btw, looking at the trend, i think i will get tons of down vote

[Curse words removed by mods]

 

[McHenryB]

no one said that that person is a criminal, they just said blocking ads is stealing

I realize that laws are different in different countries, but in mine theft is a crime. If you accuse someone of stealing, and call them a thief, you are (falsely) accusing them of a crime.

 

[tech-wreck]

maybe where truegenius lives, theft isn't a crime. in which case i'll be round tomorrow to take his computer with the intention of permanently depriving him of it.

that is the definition of theft; how can that be applied in any way to my choice to not waste bandwidth on stuff i neither want or need?

 

[JeckeL]

I realize that laws are different in different countries, but in mine theft is a crime. If you accuse someone of stealing, and call them a thief, you are (falsely) accusing them of a crime.

wow... no one is accusing you of theft, no one even knows who you are... like the other guy said, when he titled the article "Stop thief! Using adblockers is considered stealing" he was being dramatic in an attempt to vivify the article, no one is taking you to court dude. The rest of us disagree as well, but we've moved on and continue to use ad blockers... either let it go or sue toms for falsely accusing you of theft, if you can find a lawyer to take the case :lol:

 

[BearGraphics]

In response to advertisements and I AM A GRAPHICS DESIGNER.... I PAY for my phone to talk to people with which I desire to have a conversation.... I PAY for my cable to watch TV NOT ADVERTISEMENTS which is why I have a DVR and watch EVERYTHING a day late so I can ZOOM THROUGH COMMERCIALS.... what if YOU PAID to sit down at a four star restaurant to have dinner but for several minutes beforehand, several people came to sell you timeshares, the latest form of exotic shoes and a really sweet deal on Direct TV? Would you just sit there and think to yourself "I am willing to put up with this because the food is just that good!" I really doubt it. So when you get stuff for "FREE" then hey advertise away, but don't invade my PAID SUBSCRIPTION....

 

[voodoo917]

I don't remember the author calling people stooges, idiots, ...

You didn't read the bit where he called people who use ad-blockers "thieves" and say they were "stealing"? That's a libel as it is demonstrably untrue - or certainly here in the EU where the point has been determined in a court of law.

I don't appreciate being libelled - I wouldn't mind so much being called an idiot or whatever, but don't let's have professional journalists accusing me of being a criminal, thank you.

i didn't find it offensive
because only those who are using adblocker to block toms will find it offensive, because they will see at as author is calling them thief but indeed author is calling those thief who use their service and don't even want to run ads in a corner.

Good enough, thanks for clarifying that!

I'm just wondering what Tom's writers will write next, "When you use Anti-Virus Software, you are taking the shoes off of a hackers baby's feet!" springs to mind!

The writer of this drivel should be fired along with whoever decided it was news worthy to call your members criminals!

you are using strawmen fallacy
you are representing author's statement wrongly to make it more vulnerable to attack
hacker is doing a crime you can't compare showing an ad of pizzahut to hacker hacking you pc
hacker is doing damage to you so that is why you need antivirus, but when you see an ad of pizzahut then you will not get any damage
do you buy pizza's for lifetime at no cost from pizzahut ( unless you are owner of pizzahut ), i guess no, you pay for whatever you buy, and so you pay for reading toms article, indeed you don't pay, you just have to let the ads.

I'm sorry, I used to keep this site in my adblocker whitelist but not any more.
I get that sites need this ad revenue, and if you can work out precisely how much you will make from me not looking at nor clicking on each ad then I would be happy to pay it to you rounded down to the nearest penny/cent (clue: that's somewhere around £0.00).
I would be very happy to pay a bit of money in order to support the site, like I do with a subscription to other online magazines, as long as there weren't any ads.

The main reason that I have an adblocker is because of the way in which I and I'm sure many others browse the web. I open at least 15-20 links at a time and then one by one as they load, at least 4 video ads start playing. I then have to go and search through all of these tabs to find the one which is playing, which is fine in Chrome because there is the little speaker icon which shows the tab is playing audio... Unless I have more than about 70 windows open (which happens all too frequently), in which case the tabs are too narrow to see the audio icons.
Until ads become less intrusive, I'm afraid I will not be disabling my adblocker for sites other than those I want to support - so not you any more Tom's.

there must be something wrong with your pc or browser, because i don't get to see this much ads. ( see photo below )
maybe you clicked on some ads on your favourite pom..... pom pom pom pom site and someone installed a malware in your pc which is showing ads ( which have no link to the site you are browsing )
you can't blame some one if someone else is doing wrong to you

Yesterday I opened up TOMS and got bombardee by full page adverts that kept blocking out the content on TOMS and when not doing that it kept jumping the TOMS content up and down as I was trying to read !!!!!!! I'm now looking at a good free adblocker! Can anyone point in in the best direction?

there must be something wrong with your pc or browser, because i don't get to see this much ads. ( see photo below )
maybe you clicked on some ads on your favourite pom..... pom pom pom pom site and someone installed a malware in your pc which is showing ads ( which have no link to the site you are browsing )


see , all these ads are a result of my searches and i indeed want to click on all 3 ( but i think that will make me look like a fake clicker and ad partner may see it as false click so i refrain myself from clicking too often )

You Sir are a "Fine Upstanding Fellow"! Your diatribe against ad-blockers, your superior intellect and vehement defense of bull crap I don't want to see, has totally opened my eye's......... NOT!

I have no intentions of trying to figure out if I'm gonna get a glimpse of a new delicious pizza for my trouble or be redirected 40 times until I end up on a page that you can't close and can't back out of and you end up having to shut down your browser.

By Tom's staff's on admission, they have NO CONTROL OVER THE ADVERTISEMENTS DISPLAYED ON THERE PAGES!

As far as your observation on how few ads there are on one of Tom's pages, well......... there are none on mine when I view it, which is exactly the number I was shooting for. I am well aware of the advent of Pizza; I just don't give two shiny "Rays of Sunshine" about an advertisement for it getting in the way of a GPU review!

Feel free to suck on those glorious ads until your eyeballs cave in, I myself have the desire and the technology to not be bothered by a damn one of them and that's the way it's gonna stay!

Boy, I could really go for some pizza about now! LMAO!!!

 

[IamTimTech]

I've never frequented a site for very long when I thought an adblocker was necessary to view it. I've never even considered an ad blocker, nor do I consider clicking ads. I will however be installing a full adblocker because of this ridiculous thread.

Trying to shove products down someone's throat is no better than taking small amounts of their money at a time. On my radio, on my Pandora, on TV, on every website. When will advertisers stop?

Edit: I can thank a stupid persistent "Logan University" ad for my grammatical errors in this very post.....

 

[truegenius]

i have seen many pc with too many ads showing up even while browsing wikipedia, and after taking a look i found that they use torrents, have improper or outdated or expired antivirus, frequently visits sites with "those" videos, and then they complain like i can't browse a site because i get 40 pages opened and needs to restart my pc

i can see that users can't stop viewing that type of videos and can't stop using pirated softwares and see lots of ads there, so you can use ad blocker there and can whitelist toms and other sites which you browse to get help this will help more instead of just saying thanks when you get what you wanted to know

the money you pay to your isp doesn't go to any sites you browse
the only way they get money to run their site, manage infrastructure, pay employees for their efforts is by using ads or by charging subscription money ( just like whatsapp, which does not show ads but charge subscription money, or like facebook which does not charge subscription but show ads and pages )

 

[garryash]

TRUEGENIUS - dont tar everyone with your own brush !!!!! Why do you think that we all look at porn sites all day long?? I mainly browse computer based sites that have nearly always been recommended by users on "TOMS". I never click on anything that comes up on a website unless I know from other sources that it is safe. Call me boring if you like but at 66 I have had enough agro in the past without inviteing it by opening up unknown sites on the internet! Or are your comments on here just there to "get other readers uptight"??

 

[IamTimTech]

I for one like "those sites" and I don't get malware. Most of my customers are either middle aged or older and they end up with Malware because they think they are clicking on an internal link for the site they are on (usually news sites) and end up at an external site downloading some "helpful add-in". An adblocker isn't a preference for people who aren't in the know, it is more an antimalware program.

 

[truegenius]

^ people like that does not generally visit tech sites, for them adblocker are indeed like antimalware, if they visit create account and ask question then they have enough knowledge to use internet safely
and indeed these memebers are the ones which contributes to tech sites most
but looking at comments of people in this thread it is clear that they don't even want to spend fraction of their internet bandwidth ( they can waste it on watching cat videos ) for supporting sites they freauently help to read GPU reviews etc

@garryash, why you feeling offended, i didn't even mentioned you or adult videos that you are talking about, that was your perception of vision which lead you to think like this
that was indeed my job experience when i used to have AMC's of my many customer's numerous PC's, and i just shared that experience here

 

[Math Geek]

here is a very interesting article about how the ad game "allegedly" works https://moz.com/blog/online-advertising-fraud

very interesting read and if it is even close to true it sure puts a heck of a twist to any argument about the pros and cons of online ads. it basically says 90+% of a company's online ad budget is scammed away by a combination of ad agencies, ad serving services and websites who combine to create fake page traffic (thus fake ad views) and split the cash through a series of kickbacks and "service fees". the actual company paying for the ads sees almost no true human eyes on their ads and of course only a tiny fraction of those yield true clicks on the ads, making almost everything spent totally wasted money!!