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Pachter talks about AdBlock

Passive ads, I've no problem with. It's when you're forced to look at them or even have them playing, that I have a problem with. Ads should not used as a wall to climb in order to get to the content you actually want to see.
 
on the plus side his video pushed me to try it out.. i wish i knew about this sooner.. i disabled it for gaf though

Lol that's exactly what I was thinking. Lets face it, people care about #1 and ads will never be something anyone wants to sit down and view... in the end selecting that question and going on that rant probably caused a 50% increase in the use on ad blocker on gametrailers...
 
Twitch doesn't get around it. And in this case i don't understand why they even try. I have heard 2 streamers talk about how playing ads barely generates any income and that their main source of income are the subscribers. I hope that at some point twitch will drop showing ads altogether.

This pops up instead, yea it doesn't get around but it's something

Screen-Shot-2014-02-14-at-9.54.28-AM.png
 
Rev3 is a prime example of how to do ads the right way. Not only do they avoid adblock, but their viewers don't have to worry about intrusive/malicious ads. Rev3 gets paid and the viewers get content. Win-win.
Yep, they get paid and it is not some shit ad.

Twitch doesn't get around it. And in this case i don't understand why they even try. I have heard 2 streamers talk about how playing ads barely generates any income and that their main source of income are the subscribers. I hope that at some point twitch will drop showing ads altogether.

Yeah, subs make up most of the income for streamers (that and donations), even streaming for half a day and with 4000 viewers only gets you like $100 odd (info comes from Dan's Gaming).

You can opt out of it if you want to. I think it is on the bottom of the screen.

Well, I do remove the crap it thinks I like (but I don't), but it keeps adding it back.

(As I side note, google is feeding me dodgy dating site ads on this site ATM).
 
Pachter has the nerve to insult a viewer due to viewing things differently then he does: telling him he is morally superior to him (a subjective view if he is a relativist) because he believes a person that doesn't watch ads is stealing? On what moral framework is he basing this on?

He is making a Tragedy of the Commons argument. You can motivate that with a variety of moral frameworks:

1. Categorical Imperative: You can't universalize the act of using AdBlock, because it would cause all of these sites to go out of business.

2. Enlightened Self-Interest: Helping GameTrailers make money benefits both you and GT, since they will be able to continue to exist and produce more content.

3. Social Contract: By choosing to make use of the site, you are implicitly taking on a responsibility to obey its rules.
 
"SCUM BAG, BASTARD, IDIOT, SCUM BAG.. etc" I knew there was a reason I stopped watching/listening to what he had to say years ago. Nice to see some things never change.

I agree. Watched him for a few weeks for opinions before I couldn't handle it any more. Calling someone those things over a personal opinion on advertisement in an internet video is pathetic and really isn't part of the "professional" image he set for himself.
 
Because ads are literally the most consumer-friendly way of having customers pay for something, but people still refuse to do even that. There is no better way.

I have no problem seeing ads when I'm getting back something of value. Video game websites don't provide me with that type of value, however a service like crunchyroll that let's me stream anime on my tablet and feeds me ads every few minutes provides me value
 

Lmao, my goodness. Where is the value to ad providers when crap like this happens? Don't people usually hit the little x button when stuff like this happens so that they can get to the content they came to see?
 
I adblock almost every site unless they are like GAF in which the ads don't bother me at all. There's a small ad on top and on the bottom, it's not annoying and I don't mind at all.

Any video site gets adblocked immediately, I can't stand video ads.
 
I adblock almost every site unless they are like GAF in which the ads don't bother me at all. There's a small ad on top and on the bottom, it's not annoying and I don't mind at all.

Any video site gets adblocked immediately, I can't stand video ads.


Watch out!! to some people, you are worst then Hitler for using adblcker.
 
intrusive advertising is just that. its not like witnessing a commercial during a video to have pop ups and large annoying graphics everywhere shaking/making sound.

more sites should use messaging to communicate to ad block users of why they shouldn't block their ad's. its worked for many of the community sites i visit, even if you don't pay attention, its hard to avoid seeing ad spaces with messaging from the site itself asking you to disable.
 
Adblock is a tool and an increasingly useful one given how Malware and Viri are spread these days and the increasingly obvious fact that websites have no intention of curating their ads. Frankly everyone should have adblock installed these days when we are bombarded by strange links from multiple sources. The key thing is if you stumble across a site you enjoy or you have enjoyed that content then you should whitelist the site to ensure that author/site gets paid.

Until all scripts are vetted and 100% clean then everyone should be using adblock and people like Pachter who tell us to uninstall it are are being extremely selfish. If we read that site or adsite has been hacked we can protect our PC's with adblock, without it that Malware is coming down the pipe along with your video of Pachter. Websites want the money from advertising but none of the grief that it can cause, you can't have it both ways.
 
If they worked, they wouldn't have needed to make them more intrusive and more intrusive. And more annoying and more annoying. And they also wouldn't have needed to figure out ways to trick users into clicking on them.

And then there simply wouldn't be a reason for AdBlock to exist.

Trying new ways to advertise does not mean the old ways ir advertising as a whole is ineffective
 
Adblock only exists because people/companies that advertise on the web have proven themselves to have no morals and no self control.

If the ads that were being served up weren't annoying, invasive, and occasionally dangerous, Adblock and its ilk wouldn't have gained any traction.

I guess I'm the only one who remembers going to a website and seeing more than one popup window, pop-under windows, ads that played sound at high volume as soon as they loaded, ads that slowed down loading immensely with large amounts of flash video, ads that captured your mouse cursor so you could play the "game" they put in their banner, ads that expanded to cover up the actual content of the page you were trying to visit, etc.

And that's not even getting into the ones that are actively hostile to your computer, spreading tracking cookies, spyware, adware, malware, trying to get you to install malicious programs, and so on.

Websites have to prove that they are trustworthy with the ads they serve up, then I will unblock them. I let ads through on GAF, I let ads through on Giant Bomb (even though this occasionally means annoying full page background ads on the actual website page), I let ads through on GameTrailers, and a few others. Everything else stays blocked until I see reason to whitelist the site.

Hell, even trusted sites like GAF occasionally let bullshit ads through on the desktop or mobile versions of the site accidentally, before they pinpoint where the awful ads are coming from.

Call me a thief all you want. I'm not putting my computer at risk by letting ads through on every website on the internet.

Bottom line, advertisers cannot be trusted. Therefore, Adblock.

Excellent post and I am 100% behind you. Self-entitlement is beyond reasonable levels. It is unreal.

Now let us look at the following,

Patch.png


The poster asks two legitimate and serious questions about the future of game journalism (gaming sites, news, opinions, ect) with such fierce competition from Youtube and Twitch. His third point is that there is no point in allowing ad revenue to work as intended on various gaming sites because their content can be easily found on myriads gaming sites, blogs, and youtube videos as well as from the official sites and forums. That is perfectly fine reasoning. He is a hard-line-capitalist; I would say a traditional one, in which for him there is no demand content from any gaming website that cannot be found or satiated or replaced from other online environments. Ergo, there is nothing unique for him reading any gaming-related piece of the net because it is easily producible, replaceable and replicable from the public or from a self-independent source.

You cannot force anyone to do something out of blind faith - that he should do it for the greater good, for the greater mankind, let alone a client who has every right to have this view and act as he will.

It's hilarious...That is hilarious...Wow you are a great dude...Alright, you are the worst kind of person in the world because you want everything for free. You do not want to sit through ads because you are low-bottom-sucking scrum. You think the guys sitting around me should work for free (I actually do work for free), they should't be paid, the camera equipment should be bought by somebody and not get any earn out on that because you are too much of scumbag to watch ads.

There are guys way smarting than you working on defeating ad blocks...might as well run the ads scumbag. The reason I keep calling you a scumbag, by the way you are one...So if everybody had your attitude we would not have youtube, TV would go away cause professionally produced content would go away and we would live in a society run by anarchists ...You suck...The internet would stop if we didn't have ads you idiot.

You shouldn't demand from your viewers to jump when you say jump and to sit when you say sit and grab them from their neck using this-is-some-world-poverty/urgency type of bull. It is not the client's business how me or anyone else gets paid and what type of contract me or anyone else has signed and what type of business model me or anyone else is part of. Ethics matters to this extend are self-righteous and hypocritical at least. No one is entitled to anything as long as he or she is not trespassing any law premise and since he is not doing that again he has all the rights in the world to use adblock. Principles are good for discussions and ethically-material-consumption but they are that; good discussion points and nothing else; no obligations and no must-dos.

I can't believe that this person is a good professional role model because "he is telling him like it is". I honestly can't believe that we have reached a point, in the gaming community where a professional acting unprofessionally is an act of praise and recommendation and calls for celebration.

This is beyond disgusting. It is appalling. And at the end of the day, if Gametrailers content is superb, premium, out-of-this-world they should either put it behind a monthly pay-wall or a yearly subscription-model.

God.
 
Honestly the ONLY reason I turn off adblock on GAF and other forums are because of the social pressure. If these sites would give me an option to purchase adfree viewing at a fair price, I'd take it in a heart beat.

I want to support places I like but ads are full of viruses and Spyware that the site hosters usually aren't even aware of. There have even been virus scares here on GAF.

When it comes down to it it's the same issue as piracy, you can sit there all day and show people how harmful it is and how much of assholes they're being but at the end of the day adblock and pirating exist and there's nothing you can do take them go away, so it's the responsibility of the content providers to come up with new ways to monetize and provide a service that's worth paying for. Free riders are gonna free ride.
 
I don't have a fundamental problem with ads. They can be entertaining and informative, and become a part of popular culture. But somewhere along the way (and I'm sure some would say it happened before I was even born), the lesser advertisers realized that they could get noticed by being more annoying than the next guy. Then the VCR came along, and it empowered people to skip ads, and I remember how threatened the advertising industry felt about that. But it wouldn't have been a threat if people didn't fucking hate you. And then the DVR came along with it's 30-second skip-forward, and it was time for round two. Oh noes, empowered sheep means the death of our industry!

Ads on the internet pushed so far that advertisers were literally killing our computers by deliberately infecting them with AIDS. Adblock comes along, and pushes back. Oh no, won't somebody please think of the poor advertisers?

I use a PVR. I don't bother to skip ads, until an annoying one comes on. Then I start skipping, and I don't stop until I reach the show. I'm not going to deliberately stop to watch ads I don't care about. But a few bad apples are ruining things for everyone else.

I used to use Adblock. Then I saw Evilore saying that he works hard to ensure that Neogaf's ads aren't bad, so I whitelisted Neogaf. Then I saw Jim Sterling's bit on Adblock, so I gave turning the program off a try. Then my computer died (hopefully unrelated but maybe not?), so I built a new one and I haven't installed Adblock yet. I've mostly been avoiding any site that would make me want it. Maybe I'm playing with fire and just begging to get burned again, but I'm willing to give people a chance.

Software developers working for the ad industry might be working on ways to defeat Adblock, but I'm sure not rooting for them. In fact, fuck anyone who's working on a way around Adblock. Internet ads are the worst ads, and they should be working on trying to improve their image and convincing people to turn Adblock off, not trying to find new and unstoppable ways to give me fucking AIDS.
 
Ad block on 100% of the time. Unless it's some anime sites that I care about because they stream things I can't get any where else. But they provide product that is harder to get. Gaming I have hundreds of options and forums like gaf are usually the best sources so ad block on for gaming sites. Really ad block saved the internet in my mind because it's so clean and enjoyable.
 
does pachter really think i'm going anywhere near gametrailers without some protection from the crap that site runs? just install ghostery and load up gametrailers.com and you'll see what i mean.
 
okay serious question and no bullshit, who here actually disables ad block on certain sites? because I just leave it on and don't even notice because its become a part of my routine or procedure on the internet on laptops/desktops. on mobile devices its a completely different story since i have no way to stop them
that I know of
but they don't really bother me on those devices.
Neogaf is the only site I have it unblocked on. However other than random surfing, neogaf is the only site I go to daily. I don't need anything but gaf for muh gaminz needz!
 

Look... You've got to meet people halfway here. This... This sort of crap right here is the exact reason Adblock exists. Until advertisers can get their shit together and stop with annoying, intrusive, virus-laden ads, more and more people are going to get on the Adblock train.
 
An internet without adblock is an internet I want no part in. It would require some kind of DRM that would subvert the open sharing of information.

I should be able to choose what I want to download from a public website freely. If content-providers want to paywall or have me sign a ToS in order to use their website, so be it. Otherwise, I will accept ads, scripts, and redirects on a block-by-default whitelist basis.
 
The thing I have never understood about ads is how people make any decent kind of money off them. They are annoying, typically mis-targetted and are actively ignored. They make the site money because the advertisers pay the site to host them, but how do they make any money for the advertisers?

The number of people who actually click that stuff must be very slim.
 
Speaking of subscription the only one I have is for CrunchyRoll - which is monthly- and its superb video quality and the two gaming sites I would easily pay for that if there was an option would be NeoGaf and Polygon because of stuff like this.
 
Yeah no, I will continue to block all ads on every site not named GAF. Even ads in videos can be blocked easily, so forget the Hulu type ads as well. Too many annoying ads that cover the screen and play annoying sounds, not to mention the malware.
 
The viewer he's calling a scumbag said that he did not give a single fuck if sites like GameTrailers, which is the site that hosts Pach-Attack, went out of business. This implies that the viewer also does not give a fuck if there was no more Pach-Attack, since no GT = no more Pach-Attack.

*That* is really fucking offensive. The viewer deserved to be blasted.

It's offensive to say you don't care if someone lost their show? Sorry, but that's someone speaking their opinion. He needs to grow some skin instead of saying AdBlock is going to lead to a world full of anarchy and calling people with DVR's scumbags.

With his attitude, put my name up there with people who couldn't care less if this guy lost his show from lack of ad revenue. There are a handful of sites I visit without AdBlock and if I ever find myself on GameTrailers, I'll make sure they aren't one of them.
 
pachter is so out of order for the names he called that guy. he even shitted on people who dvr programs and skip through the adverts. way out of line. he needs apologise on the next show in my opinion. he's free to stand by his opinion but not start throwing insults at people.

just out of curiosity i double checked my adblock and ghostery stats for the gametrailers.com site and it's ridiculous how much shit they try to spam you with. 6 intrusive ads and 12 trackers trying to scan what i'm doing EVERYTIME i load the gametrailers main page. you think i'm using your shit without blocking? yeah right.
 
Well as was said before, Jim Sterling said it much much better :

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/8854-The-Adblock-Episode

This is the kind of approach that changes minds. He states why people do something, empathizes with them and then asks them to please not do that thing which inhibits his business. He actually touches on the reason why people use Adblock, ads have made the internet fucking miserable, instead of just insulting them them and begging them to pay his bills for him.
 
Wait, what? Not wanting to see ads makes you a scumbag? That's not drinking the Kool-Aid, that's taking the Kool-Aid rectally.

It's not that not wanting to see ads makes you a scumbag, its that he publicly says that he does it so the hard work that they put in is worthless. That is completely dickish for that guy to say, so I do agree a bit with Pachter saying some of that but not all. Is there a better way to phrase it? Yes but he is right in a sense. I can't blame people for using adblock as there are some sites that are disgusting to see how much ads there are and the malware they could possibly contain, but I don't think you should enable it and brag about it to content creators. I'll gladly watch 30 seconds to a minute of ads if it helps support websites and people I like to watch regularly.
 
The problem with gametrailers is that they have popup adds and adds that actually redirects your entire browser to games on apple's istore. Like, I'm reading forum or looking through the site and suddenly I'm at the app-store and have to press back in my browser to get back to whatever I was doing. This has been reported to gametrailers for a long time and yet they haven't fixed it yet.

I quit going to sites that do that, fuck them.
 
Kind of surprised some of you are adamant about using ad-block. We have this internet culture where nobody wants to pay for anything and blows me away. Music most notably. If you knew what the songwriters were going through, you would probably think other wise.

Also as a Hulu plus user for some years I remember when there were no ads, to a couple, then a lot which it presently has. Even though I would willing pay more just lessen them, I understand the importance of having them. It should be simple to comprehend.


I dont comprehend how you accept Hulu ads. You are paying additional money to view streamed tv shows. And they ad spam you. This is the reason Netflix is 1000x better. If Netflix adopts ads I'd want them to come out with an ad-free version for $3 more. Seriously Fuck ads. Any streaming service you PAY to use shouldn't have them.

Should PS+ have ads before every game you play? Would you "understand it" if they did? This is one of the reasons people are reluctant to jump fully into disc-less entertainment, because companies will try and shove ads down our throat.

DOWN WITH ADS! YES TO THE CONTENT I AM PAYING FOR!!
 
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