The Archfiend said:
And I put it out there and I made a stance against people using Adblock to say "Hey, if you want to enjoy a website like this, you need to think of the ramifications of you using Adblock, the next person using Adblock, and then everyone else eventually using Adblock". You need to think about what that would do, and that's what I wanted to put out there: the thinking process, to get people thinking here.
Funny he mentions that, it's thinking in both the individual and the aggregate that has convinced me that Adblocking is a necessity. This started kinda in the 2000's. One person visiting a site without ads
probably means a little bit less of money (I don't know of any ad providers that pay for merely *displaying* ads, they all require provable clicks, or even worse, click-to-buys) and a lot of people adblocking
probably means more of less of money. But a person adblocking
provably means a bit less congestion in the network and one machine safer from a virus infection or a total bork, and a lot of people adblocking
provably means far less network congestion and far more people protected against opportunistic virus infections or machines rendered unusable.
In the end, Adblock is not for the sites to not earn money (you *can* disable adblocking at the domain level for the sites you fav, always have had), but because one doesn't want to be shoved who knows what kind of content, most likely dangerous, when I browse a specific site with a specific intention. I can't (shouldn't) have to risk my system's integrity just because say Pokécommunity were to throw third-party ads from Mr. Enlarge Your Penis, Prince of Nigeria.
I could use the famous restaurant food analogy, but that's kinda way past its prime.
If a site wants to show me ads, they need to be responsible and prove that those ads are and not dangerous. They should be served and serviced by the site itself, and not from a third party that can not be made responsible, not even after the damage is done.
Or -much easier and better in aggregate- they can prove that
to the Adblock devs and enter the list of ad providers that Adblock allows through by default. Thats a net gain for
all participants (safer browsing, less congestion, better ads), and even for the non-participants.