• vapeloki@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      That is true and false. Adblock plus takes money for the acceptable afs program, yes. But there are clear guidelines about the ads. Containing criteria for privacy, size in relation to content and more.

      I work in IT for 20 years now. Half this time my salary was paid for by ads:

      My company hosted big german news outlets. All money they made online was from ads.

      More adblockers meant less income so their required more ads just to come out without losing money.

      ABP tried to break this cycle.

      Now we are having paywals, and paywal breakers. And at this point this is outright stealing.

      If adblockers would allow ads that adhere to the acceptable ads criteria, the world would be a better place. Less paywals, less ads and maybe some companies would pay their employees a little bit more.

      • pixelscript@lemm.ee
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        1 hour ago

        If adblockers would allow ads that adhere to the acceptable ads criteria, the world would be a better place. Less paywals, less ads and maybe some companies would pay their employees a little bit more.

        I disagree. The system may have began in earnest goodwill, but financial incentive inevitably erodes goodwill. ABP becomes incentivized to adapt its definition of “acceptable” based on potential revenues they stand to gain from increasingly persuasive advertisers. Your vision of a better world under this system is at best temporary.

        The alternative model, simply paying for goods and services directly, is a far more robust solution.

      • Red Army Dog Cooper@lemmy.ml
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        24 minutes ago

        I would hardly call any of this steeling, The authors of the articles and the people needed to maintain the website are not being given the full value of there labor, they are already being stollen from, I do not care if the big company cannot make as much money, there profit is the theft of employee wages

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        AdBlock Plus takes money to whitelist ads.

        This is true and false, for in fact, you see, AdBlock Plus takes money to whitelist ads.

        ???

      • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 hours ago

        Using proper ad-blockers that actually let you block ads and not just some that they don’t get paid to show, is no more stealing than me walking away from the TV during commercials (if I still had flow TV). It’s just more convenient for me. If I can not use a site without allowing their shitty ads, they can go fuck themselves, I will go somewhere else.

        I’d also happily pay for content, if the prices they charged were reasonable. But greed always gets In the way and subscriptions just go up-up-up, manipulative pricing strategies that change the prices according to number of views etc. just to keep that infinite growth going. Companies that incorporate those kind of things can go to hell.

          • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 hours ago

            I added to my comment, maybe after you replied.

            Like I mentioned in the edit, I don’t mind paying for content. But the way they manage the pricing makes me defy them out of spite. When they want to manipulate the pricing like that, they themselves started the immoral behaviour. When your opponent fights dirty, you level the playing field by circumventing their efforts.

      • kungfuratte
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        3 hours ago

        Even if you go with the “acceptable” part of that whole thing it’s still shady.

        It’s one thing to boycott ads as an individual user (and to “steal” ad revenue from websites) but a completely different thing if you run an external service that steals (without quotation marks) from the revenue pool.

      • BigDiction@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        You delivered some good points. I also work with publishers.

        Ad blockers have had an impact, but I think the bigger driver is that premium demand has migrated spending to connected TV (CTV, showing ads on an Internet connected large screen). Publishers just don’t get the rates they used to for web and mobile inventory, even if they’re doing everything right.

        I think when another trendy channel like AI ads straight to your brain or whatever pops up we will see another migration.

      • tux@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Out of curiosity, what was your CEO and other executives making while claiming “it’s cause ad blockers”?

        • vapeloki@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          We didn’t care. We were the hosting provider nor the news outlets. But we had close contact to our customers. And a lot of the smaller customers had a hard time to even survive. The primary source of income was print until paywals came around. Some customers never had print and had to close down with the surge of ad blockers