Web Marketing Strategy Update

21 Responses to “ Webmasters, Could Firefox Be Bad For Your Health? ”

1. msandersen says:

   January 7, 2006 at 9:53 pm

   Hmm, wonder if there should be advertising on this page. Can’t tell, since they’re being blocked Guess what? That’s my choice, not yours. No, it isn’t a FireFox extension, it’s a custom Hosts file with common ad servers, though occasionally I use the “Block Images From…” option in the context menu on sites that put ads in the body of the story, which is extremely annoying. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for Flash ads. I might post a bug report suggesting they should fix that. Comparing it to spamming is kinda funny and quite ludicrous.
   I don’t care about banner ads, they’re not intrusive. Giving power back to the consumer is a marketer’s worst nightmare, since if you give them choice and easy enough to choose, they will choose not to be brainwashed most of the time. I would be happy if TVs came with an AdZapper function, even if off by default, which works with video recorders as well. For now, I’ve got Mute, or Fast Forward on the VCR. That’s my choice.
2. Azam says:

   January 8, 2006 at 10:42 am

   Yeah, your solution sounds great.

   For you.

   But you can only do it because other people seeing the ads are in effect carrying you, and paying your way.

   If we all blocked out all the advertising, free content would no longer be free, and paid content would cost more. Both online and off. You wouldn’t be able to access this or any other information based website without getting out your credit card first.

   What would be more annoying, the ads you complain of in the body of the story, or a link saying, “Pay Now To Continue Reading”?

   Spammers think only of themselves and abuse email accounts against the owner’s wishes because they can get away with it. Ad blocker users think only of themselves and abuse websites against the owner’s wishes because they can get away with it.
3. Anonymous says:

   January 19, 2006 at 12:19 am

   The attitude displayed in this post is astonishing. You do not control what appears on my computer, you do not control what my computer does with the data that it requests. Face it — websites just present default data that the user can manipulate any way they see fit for any purpose they like, so long as they aren’t doing anything illegal — and so sorry to tell you, it’s not illegal for me to change, say, the color of your page to fuschia should I so wish. And that’s just the start of what I can do.

   My computer is MINE. It belongs to ME, not you.

   Understand?

   Your site appears on my computer by your choice — you don’t control my software and its settings, you just provide a default.

   The media is so used to being in full control of the user’s experience that it’s refusing to change. Those times are now finally over and readers like me are relishing being in control after decades of exploitation. And publishers like you don’t even consider the negative consequences your actions can have when you interfere with my right to do what I want with my computer. What if I needed to access something only available in a context menu?

   Thanks for the link to the oncontextmenu-unblocking Greasemonkey script. You just solved a problem that a shortsighted webdesigner like you created.

   Get over yourself.
4. Azam says:

   January 31, 2006 at 3:30 am

   My site doesn’t appear on your computer by MY choice. It’s by YOUR choice. If it was MY choice, you wouldn’t be able to see my website, because I wouldn’t allow access to anyone using an ad blocker!

   See my follow-up post Blocking Ads and Stealing Commissions with Firefox for more on this.

   The media is so used to being in full control of the user’s experience that it’s refusing to change. Those times are now finally over and readers like me are relishing being in control after decades of exploitation.

   The truth is, you have less control today than ever. You can’t see it because you’re blinded by the illusion of control you allude to. The massive news networks, and companies like Google and Yahoo are in de-facto control of what information you receive unless you are willing to go out of your way to get it. By selecting what news stories are aired, the networks can actively control your worldview according to their own politics.

   And publishers like you don’t even consider the negative consequences your actions can have when you interfere with my right to do what I want with my computer. What if I needed to access something only available in a context menu?

   I don’t block visitors using the context menu, but I can tell you precisely why it came about that some webmasters do: because visitors were stealing from them, and at the time that was seen as a way to prevent it.
5. Ralf Schmedlap says:

   February 7, 2006 at 9:16 am

   So – I’m watching TV and I mute the colume during commercials. Or I tape/TiVO a show and skip through them — I’m stealing?

   I rip the first 50 pages out of my Wired magazine because they are all ads — I’m stealing?

   I put a piece of tape over the part of my display showing banner ads — I’m stealing?

   Poor you – a FEW readers block the ads on your site. If you ran ads through your own server instead of using some all-knowing super-powerful spybot ad server the ads would still get through anyway. No one is stealing here. Your site will continue, the world will still keep spinning. As long as there are ads a FEW people will despise them and find ways around them. Deal with it or get out of the business.
6. Alan says:

   February 28, 2006 at 2:52 pm

   Adblock works beautifully against casalemedia. It’s easy to install. To add new filters, use Ctrl-Shift-F, then click on the “FlashBlock” banner.
7. Azam says:

   March 3, 2006 at 11:30 am

   No one is concerned with a FEW people, Ralf. And if I say you can’t read my content without paying for it by allowing ads to be displayed, yes, you are stealing, because the content is mine.

   I wrote it, I own the copyright, and I pay for you to be able to view it on your computer.

   Having ownership, I get to decide the price to view it.

   If you don’t pay that price, you are stealing. Whether my site continues or not is irrelevant. Robbing a bank, or sneaking a boiled sweet into your pocket at the corner store are both stealing. Scale is unimportant.

   The definition of stealing is obtaining something without permission.

   If I decide permission to obtain the information on my website is contingent on not blocking or subverting advertising, then it follows that anyone who does block ads does not have my permission, and therefore is stealing. Simple, no?

   Similarly, if another webmaster links to images on my website and displays them on their site without my permission they are stealing too. Yet no one argues stealing bandwidth through image hijacking is ok.

   One last example. Suppose I write a book. I could sell it as a stand alone book. I could turn it into a subscription website, or I could decide to enable more people to read it by turning it into an ad-supported website.

   In each case, I am granting permission to read the book in return for financial reward.

   Now, if someone took a copy of that book from me without paying they would be stealing. If they hacked into my subscription site to read the book they would be stealing. If they read it in my ad-supported website in a manner that prevents me from receiving payment for my work, why is that not stealing also?

   From your comments you are obviously unaware of the extent of the problem and the many types of blocking being employed. If you had a more thorough grasp of the subject under discussion you would know that ad blockers and link rewriters do not only target users of major third party ad servers. Many of my ads are in fact run through my own server.
8. Nobody says:

   March 10, 2006 at 3:42 pm

   Honestly, I find this article a bit rediculous, should people be forced to use IE which has a bunch of security holes and isn’t even close to being standards complient becuase one person doesn’t like the posibilities another browser gives them? BTW, Firefox can run on Windows, Mac, Linux, etc., so let’s say they are all bad for a webmasters health. You’re attacking Firefox, which by itself doesn’t do anything you talked about in this article, it’s the extensions that do that, or actually extensions to an extension. I come from the Linux world, where we don’t force anything on anybody and let them customize everything to their liking. I honestly hate ads, especially since a big number of them are “Do this and get a FREE PS2!”, and then people don’t read the fine print, and go crying about how they get tons of spam, or credit problems because they clicked an ad. I also am not a nude or porn fan, so I don’t those stupid half-naked dating ads in my face either. I have a site, and I have made several sites for other people ad-free, becuase I don’t do things to other people that I don’t like done to me. If you chose to put ads on your site, I don’t mind, but this article is somewhat childish, IMHO.
9. Azam says:

   March 15, 2006 at 11:49 am

   I run Macs and use both FireFox and Safari. You didn’t read the article properly, IMHO.
10. Nobody says:

    March 16, 2006 at 10:33 pm

    I guess the title should read “Webmasters, could some Firefox extensions be bad for your health?” then. I still stick to my opinion which I stated in the second part of my post. ^_~
11. John says:

    July 22, 2006 at 12:12 am

    At first glance I thought this was a joke…

    I’m still receiving the ads, I just have a filter that tells the browser to save me some resources and not display them. IS IT OK FOR YOU TO STEAL MY RAM?!?!?!?!!!11

    Besides, if you care so much about your content being “stolen”, even though you put it publicly available on teh intrawebz, then why don’t you take your devel Machine and unplug it’s Internet connection just to make sure no witty coders create a bypass for your obnoxious adverts. Oh the humanity! How can people be so cruel?
12. Vlajbert says:

    August 21, 2006 at 8:35 pm

    Heh, I have 8 scripts on the list. Cool.

    Your taking the same position that the RIAA is. Don’t try and grow with the technology, try to stop it. How about stop wasting your time trying to block the technology and try to come up with a better revenue model. Trying to stop the techonology is futile and you will loose in the long run.

    Look, I work a very large internet media company, http://www.ibsys.com. We do 650,000,000 page views and 12,000,000 unique users, per Neilson, a month. We’re generally rank 4th just under CNN/Yahoo/MSN for news. We’re a totally ad based revenue model. We don’t sit around bitching about ad blockers, we come up with new revenue models.

    Anyway, there is NOTHING you can do to stop GM scripting. There is nothing in the request headers to tell you I run GM. So to test you would have to drop a JS script and once you do, your mine. I’ll just embargo it.

    Welcome to the Inet.

    vlajbert@Gmail.com
13. John Ya Ya says:

    October 17, 2006 at 4:53 pm

    Ahhh no most advertizing websites are there to make additional revenues. If you don’t like the blocking of your adds then take down the website. See how long companies like Fox, CNN, put them back up. They have to put them up just to compete. Consumers are usualy smarter then to click on adds and are tired of the bombardment of the crap. FYI most ad clicks now days are mistakes. LOL
14. Kim says:

    October 19, 2006 at 4:44 pm

    I disagree with your viewpoint that the site is yours and that you decide the payment of viewing your site is to have adverts on the site. Firstly, the purpose of web sites should be to provide content and the person browsing the site should expect to be provided that content. The value should be in the content.

    In some countries, bandwidth is extremely expensive and by placing adverts on sites where content is expected and adverts dominate, the author of the site is incurring unnecessary expenses for the viewer and in my view the website is stealing from the viewer. The slow down of the internet due the delivery of ads is the greatest theft of all – time.

    The viewer has the right to view or not view all or any part of your site. By making it available to a medium such as the internet, you accept that the viewer voluntarily receives your pages and that the web site owner has no rights to the viewer’s equipment and how that equipment is configured.

    Taking your attitude, all televison sets should be configured so that you cannot change channels during adverts, video Machines should be altered so that you could not fast forward past adverts. God forbid that you actually turn the Machine off during adverts.

    If I am not in the market for anything, why should I be subjected to content in which I have no interest.

    In fact, are you sure you wouldn’t like to place sticks in my eyes and strap my head so that I cannot look away from adverts?

    I think that you are taking a marketing view where the public are seen as dumb animals who shouldn’t dare disapprove of your attempts to push products at them. Most people get tired of advert overload and they are doing something about it.

    Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and have a landing page saying that if you do not wish to see adverts, please do not visit this site?

    My bet is that you wouldn’t dare because your site would lose a huge amount of traffic.

    By the way, I got to this page via a google search looking for ways to disable intellitxt.
15. ad_hater says:

    December 21, 2006 at 8:30 pm

    Your assertions of blocking ads being equal to theft is laughable. In fact it’s hilarious. So you do own your website. No one forced you to make it available to the web (which you do not own). That was YOUR choice. If you don’t like the fact that people block the heinous ad blitz, TAKE YOUR SITE DOWN AND SHUT UP!
16. Hilarious says:

    June 22, 2007 at 11:09 am

    Your contention that “free” content will disappear if banner ads do is just ridiculous. Perhaps *your* content will, but there will be hundreds of thousands of others which will take your place. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the web does not earn any appreciable income from banner ads. Most of the web is informational or personal and wil happily continue with zero ad revenue. The content that does rely on ad revenue is almost entirely made up of old media dinosaurs that are on the verge of dying anyway, or (generally) have not much of interest to say. I personally can’t think of any ad-supported sites that I find worth reading, with the possible exception of The Onion.
17. scancode says:

    July 22, 2007 at 3:05 pm

    Hi. You said it. It appears on MY computer, and I pick WHAT goes inside it. I think that advertising is ok, but depends on HOW it’s implemented.
18. Antimoron says:

    August 15, 2007 at 4:40 pm

    What a bone-headed article. Stop stealing my bandwidth!!!!
19. Phil Lewis says:

    August 24, 2007 at 6:12 am

    YOUR site only has “value” if you have visitors. And with your expressed attitudes, I wouldn’t want what you have to offer anyway. I only ended up here because of a Google search that /looked/ like something useful to me.

    Sorry, control freak, the web is not yours and luckily it’s a big place with lots of other places to go. You needn’t deny me access, I’ll deny you future visits.
20. spiton money says:

    October 31, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Thanks for listing all these useful extensions.

    Sorry to see that reality makes you cry.
21. SpitOnMoney MadeMeLaugh says:

    December 4, 2009 at 8:45 pm

    LOL. Epic post number 20. Even if I am over a year late.