> That's why I also feel no guilt for browsing with AdBlock on
I understand the reasoning, but you seem to be taking it to a logical extreme. There are some reputable and useful sites that use ad income, I don't routinely use AdBlock or similar for that reason. If a site annoys me with its ads it gets DNS blacklisted (pointed towards my "you don't want to go there" page via local DNS config.
> neither the ads nor the ad-serving pages are a good deal for anyone in any way.
Hence the DNS blacklist, though this isn't overly helpful (mainly because new sites spring up constantly) and not useful to non-techies (most people don't run a local DNS cache that they can drop a new block into with a simple script call).
I am considering a browser extension that takes it from this point of view rather than the AdBlock point of view though, i.e. "I don't want to go to such sites" rather than "I'll go to such sites, but they aren't serving me ads and other crap". One of the many personal projects that will probably never see the light of day because I'm too busy with other things... (so if someone else wants to copy the idea, go ahead and I'll be an alpha/beta tester!). Something that either intercepts page transitions and warns "you've previously marked this site as having irritating pop-ups, are you sure you want to proceed?" and/or scans pages for links and visually marks those pointing towards marked domains. The next step would then be some sort of distributed store for collating what people mark so it can warn about sites I've not previously visited, though of course if such a thing became popular enough to be useful there would be the constant game of trying to stop people abusing this to block competitors sites or de-list their own.
> As for the Downloads.com, CNET, et al. ... they deserve to be down.
> There are some reputable and useful sites that use ad income, I don't routinely use AdBlock or similar for that reason. If a site annoys me with its ads it gets DNS blacklisted (pointed towards my "you don't want to go there" page via local DNS config.
This is something that sometimes actually crosses my mind. I acknowledge the existence of good people who rely on ad income (assuming they get something from ad views; I pretty much don't click on ads at all) and I'm willing to modify my behaviour to accomodate them. I sometimes unblock pages when they ask nicely (e.g. episodecalendar asks you if you could unblock ads when you have a free account, and since I actually get a real value out of this site (having my favourite shows pop up in Google Calendar, so I don't need to manually track new episodes), it was only fair that I unblock them).
From the division of Interesting Ideas That I Have No Time To Make, here's mine: an ad-block that instead of blocking ads, replaces them with crowd-sourced images of your choice - like "best of DeviantArt", Banksy pictures, ads for effective charities, etc. It was inspired by this picture I found once: http://editorial.designtaxi.com/news-banksycoke2405/big.jpg.
There was once an AdBlock extension that replaced ads with lolcats instead of removing them. I think it was an April Fool thing, but the code is probably still out there to be used as a starting point.
Another good option for replacing the ads would be to put appeals in place, things like the recent push for funding for the ebola hit areas in Africa, the appeals that followed tsunamis, famines, and other natural/humanitarian disasters, and so on.
Yes, that's also an excellent idea. The point is to allow people, per the quote I linked, to adapt the ad space to their own taste. Humanitarian appeals could be a good default. This could also solve the problem that some people complain about, that some pages have layouts built with ads in mind and become "uglier" when ads are blocked (not that I ever saw this actually happening).
I also run a local DNS blacklist that benefits everyone on my network, but I rarely update it since I started using the RequestPolicy Firefox extension. It supports the point of view of "Don't fetch resources from third party domains unless I need them." If a page is broken, I can temporarily or permanently add the missing resource for that domain or globally with a simple click. Denial by default is a much better strategy as it provides some real protection against serious threats like XSS, in addition to thwarting tracking and ads.
I understand the reasoning, but you seem to be taking it to a logical extreme. There are some reputable and useful sites that use ad income, I don't routinely use AdBlock or similar for that reason. If a site annoys me with its ads it gets DNS blacklisted (pointed towards my "you don't want to go there" page via local DNS config.
> neither the ads nor the ad-serving pages are a good deal for anyone in any way.
Hence the DNS blacklist, though this isn't overly helpful (mainly because new sites spring up constantly) and not useful to non-techies (most people don't run a local DNS cache that they can drop a new block into with a simple script call).
I am considering a browser extension that takes it from this point of view rather than the AdBlock point of view though, i.e. "I don't want to go to such sites" rather than "I'll go to such sites, but they aren't serving me ads and other crap". One of the many personal projects that will probably never see the light of day because I'm too busy with other things... (so if someone else wants to copy the idea, go ahead and I'll be an alpha/beta tester!). Something that either intercepts page transitions and warns "you've previously marked this site as having irritating pop-ups, are you sure you want to proceed?" and/or scans pages for links and visually marks those pointing towards marked domains. The next step would then be some sort of distributed store for collating what people mark so it can warn about sites I've not previously visited, though of course if such a thing became popular enough to be useful there would be the constant game of trying to stop people abusing this to block competitors sites or de-list their own.
> As for the Downloads.com, CNET, et al. ... they deserve to be down.
I can't say I disagree there!