Alexa: Blocking adblock users decreases overall website visits, such practices may also be illegal in Europe

[KetsuekiR]

On one hand, I can understand the view of the website owners. They need ads to be viewed since it is a method of income and that's always important. In fact, around a year ago, there was an incident where a German company took AdBlock Plus to court, claiming it was illegal to block ads that bring in money (here). The court ruled in favour of AdBlock, declaring that it is perfectly legal.

On the other hand, and this is what I support, the freedom to block ads should be a basic right, much in the same way that the laws that deal with spam (here). Besides, most ads that are thrown in your face are completely unrelated and rarely ever make you want to buy the product (at least, to me).

 

[Maki-Nishikino]

i dont like ads what so ever especially when the computer i had when i was at a vo-tech school got hit with a nasty virus from an infected ad

 

[Dter ic]

It should be no surprised to any average user that if some website offers a bad experience by hindering people from viewing content by stigmatizing them for their choice to block adverts, then I wouldn't visit them again when there are plenty of other sites that do the same thing for free.

Rather than waste your money on putting measures to block ad blockers, it may be better to just ask nicely for people to support you by allowing donations/ subscriptions when they visit your site. The Guardian does this well.

 

[Micael Alighieri]

It depends of the degree they use the ads, it's not the same a site where you'll have four pop ups on your screen than a site that only have some inoffensive and inocuous advertisements. Also, if the site shows or offer protected content as their sole goal (like online streaming), they shouldn't be allowed to block the aplications.

 

[Starry Windy]

Even though I understand that sites needs ads to survive, that doesn't mean that they have to force anybody to disable the adblocker if anyone wants to have access to the site, considering that adblocks can be useful for me in case I don't want to see some spywares and viruses.

Besides of that, such policies could backfire if the ads inside it happens to contains spywares and whatnot, which causes more damage and makes users tend to staying away from the site even further. In fact, from some articles that I've read somewhere, I know a certain site that have suffered hard after putting no adblocker policy and have to close down months later...

 

[Lucario]

I think blocking adblock is a bad thing, because if adblockers want to support the site, they'll disable adblock anyway (like I do on PC).