Nick Wade

"An experiment gone wrong"

Ars Technica decided to try blocking content from people using ad blocking software. The point they were trying to make was that they (and their careers, and their families) suffer from the loss of revenue, and so they thought they would make their users suffer.

I have no sympathy for this.

Firstly, you have to be insane to treat your readers this way. They are everything that you have. Without them, you have nothing. How they treat you is irrelevant - any company should treat their users with the utmost respect.

Secondly, if your revenue is dependant on the most fecking annoying model on the planet then it's your fault. Advertising sucks. Let me just repeat that to make it absolutely clear: Advertising sucks. If your users don't want to look at all the fecking annoying banners then at least allow them that. To me it seems a basic human right to choose what it is you look at and don't look at. They chose to come to your site to look at your content. Advertising works by leeching from that value. They didn't come to your site to look at the adverts - remember that.

It is a slippery slope when a company looks at potential revenue as theft. You can do what the recording industry does and treat everyone as criminals, or you can accept that business is not based on absolutes and people will always choose what is easier and benefits them. Why not spend some time considering the value in actually giving people what they want?

Years of shit advertising and lazy companies has lead to this situation. To blame users is astonishing.