Last Updated on March 28, 2017 by Mathew Diekhake
It’s almost becoming cool to know what ad blocking is and how to use it. Yes, ad blocking exists but no it’s no cool. Tech Chomps does not support ad blocking. In fact, we take great offense to it and don’t believe it should be legal.
Just like when you walk into a supermarket and don’t expect to walk out of that shop with something free in your hand, you should not expect to be able to download movies for free legally online. There is no difference between the person who owns the supermarket and the person who owns the movie. The only difference is that you found out a way to steal without being caught and you decided to convince yourself that it is perfectly okay to do so. Why? Because you benefit financially from that and you are greedy. Likewise, you shouldn’t think that it is your right to block the way the World Wide Web works which is by display advertising. When people write content online often, they do it as a job and are professionals at doing it. Yes, that means getting paid to be writers. You know, like a writer. Yes, that’s right: writing is a job, and people who do it well can make good money doing it. They deserve to make that money too without their revenue being taken away by people who think it’s cool to block advertisements so that the content people worked hard to create can’t make money when it gets viewed.
If the entire world were as irresponsible as the people who block advertisements on the web, there would be no professional content because no professional is going to stick around and work for free. That means everybody loses. They writer no longer writes, and the reader no longer has anything half decent to read. Often the readers don’t have a clue what half-decent content is, but it exists, and you will be surrounded by nothing but terrible writing with a million grammatical errors, and you will be someone always learning incorrect information. Does that sound like the kind of future you want to build for yourself? Of course, it doesn’t. You wouldn’t be that stupid.
Not only is advertising ideal for helping support the content that is created on the internet, but it also serves another purpose. Those ads that people are showing are helping businesses grow. Yes, that ad serves a purpose in helping businesses get their products seen. Guess what else you ad blocking Goonies might not have known? A percentage of people are clicking on them not because they were fooled but because people click on them to find out more about them. That is the primary purpose of the ad.
While it is true that some people have no passion for entrepreneurship online and just create content for the sake of generating money, that is not the case for everybody. I for one, find that the way the online business world of advertising works is one of the soundest business modules in the world. The writer gets paid for writing, the advertiser gets a way to be seen so that the advertising is a good investment for their business and you the reader gets to see the content for free. Why would you not support that? There is only one type of person that I don’t mind blocking ads: if your computer cannot handle the page load requirements that the ads demand. But if you are in that situation then it’s time to upgrade your computer.
Yes, I’m aware of the arguments for downloading movies free: it isn’t fair that poor people have to pay the same price as rich people, the movie-maker is rich enough already. Wrong. In the western world that we live in or even the Western European world that others live in, the wealthier people pay more in taxes. They are not obliged to buy presents that are more expensive at Christmas time, and they are not required to pay more for an apple from a store or when they choose to sit down and watch a movie. Likewise, it is not up to you to decide who is too rich already to get paid. Moreover, perhaps your figures aren’t always correct. Many movies are only made for investors, and the money isn’t coming from the movie-maker themselves. Much of that money goes back to the investor and the wealthy investor then pays tax. That is our system that our democratic society voted for, and therefore it’s the system you should use.
Yes, I’m aware of the arguments for why ad blocking should be okay: some sites show too many ads and therefore it should be able to block every site and whitelist the sites that I think are abiding by the rules. While it sounds fun to play God, that is not the most ethical way of going about it. Perhaps not visiting the websites which are showing too many ads or slow-loading and untrustworthy ads would be a better solution? It’s also up to search engines not to show sites with too many ads and ads that load too slowly. If you just hang in there and don’t block every ad from every site, i.e. don’t use ad block, then it will all work itself out eventually.