> These days, most Web publishers rely on advertising to pay the bills. Some charge subscription fees, but for the most part, readers have shown that they aren't willing to pay for access to Web content. Even if they earn revenue from subscriptions or e-commerce links, few sites can turn a profit without running a substantial number of ads.
Boo friggin' hoo. If you don't like it, shutter your site. Since 2015 when this article was written, ads have gotten worse, and the blame can't be placed entirely on people using ad blockers. FWIW I don't use one, I use the ad blocker in my brain (the article says "However, trying to actively filter ads from websites is stealing" and that's what I do when I ignore ads). I guess by their logic I should stop doing that and read every ad or else I'm tantamount to a burglar.
Blocking ads is about more than just not perceiving them (although that's a tremendous benefit). Ads are actually hostile: they often ruin the UI/UX, make the site harder to use, can install malware of all kinds, and/or directly harvest data from you for profit (which could also be called stealing, to use the language of the industry).
Ad-blocking software is simply form of self defense.
> These days, most Web publishers rely on advertising to pay the bills. Some charge subscription fees, but for the most part, readers have shown that they aren't willing to pay for access to Web content. Even if they earn revenue from subscriptions or e-commerce links, few sites can turn a profit without running a substantial number of ads.
Boo friggin' hoo. If you don't like it, shutter your site. Since 2015 when this article was written, ads have gotten worse, and the blame can't be placed entirely on people using ad blockers. FWIW I don't use one, I use the ad blocker in my brain (the article says "However, trying to actively filter ads from websites is stealing" and that's what I do when I ignore ads). I guess by their logic I should stop doing that and read every ad or else I'm tantamount to a burglar.