If all you’re seeing is Comic Sans MS, then you should read this article. Seriously.
If you haven’t noticed anything different, then it most likely means that you’re not using AdBlock and that I love you. Instead, if you are using AdBlock, then you’ve most likely noticed the new banner at the top of the page:
And naturally, if you’re using AdBlock, every single font on the site has been changed to Comic Sans MS. Oh man, I’m going to hell.
But today, instead of showing out photography and girls in latex, I’d like to express my opinion about AdBlock in the form of an open letter to AdBlock users.
Internet’s all fun and games and it’s a cheap way to spend time by watching pictures of kittens and such. Practically all you need is a machine capable of browsing internet and an internet connection. Sure, there are a glimpse of pay-to-view sites, mostly porn, but most of the accessible internet sites and services are free, such as Facebook and YouTube, which together draw over two billion unique users per month.
And what allows them to host their services while being constantly bombarded by the huge amount of people?
Advertising.
Even though Photour is a relatively small site, with an only average of 225 visitors per day and doesn’t cost really that much to host, I sympathize with the bigger sites. When traffic starts hitting astronomical numbers, the expenses follow. When there are a multitude of people creating content, you’ll need more storage space, more processing power and more bandwidth. And it’s not free.
Of course I understand how people don’t like seeing constant advertisement on a site they use every day. Heck, even I’m sometimes put off by those. But what makes you think you are privileged to block advertising completely? Even in Facebook you can, by default, hide certain ads and recommended pages that you don’t want to see again. And you can send feedback about them.
But what makes you think that you deserve a site with no advertising? Are you constantly partaking in the expenses? If not, then what is your effort to keep the site running?
Naturally I have to be realistic – there is always a bunch of selfish people in the world and nothing can be done to them and their justifications. But what about you, who’s using AdBlock just to block the mild annoyances that sometimes make you slightly discomforted to use the site you visit daily? Have you ever thought it from the service provider’s side? Have you ever given feedback about the advertisements that annoy you?
Of course there are plenty of sites that use those actually annoying advertisements that start autoplaying an annoying voice whenever your cursor happens to swing over them, or a huge box stating that you’re the 100,000th user whilst giving you a seizure. Or the sites might have pop-ups, pop-unders or even malware or scams.
I’ll have to admit, I have nothing against blocking those advertisements; if a visitor honors the site owner’s choice to advertise, then the site owner should honor the visitor’s stay by only choosing good-quality advertising. I would believe that those annoying ads are the main cause of the AdBlock’s existence in the first place.
Now I’m not going to make a statement that you should stop using AdBlock entirely, but have you ever thought that you could just enable it for the sites that are really pushing it with the quantity and/or bad quality of advertisements?
If the common trend of blocking every single ad continues, many free-to-use sites will have to start setting up pay walls or privigeled accounts, just like Finland’s biggest magazine, Helsingin Sanomat, did at the end last year. It’s the same reason why the Finland’s biggest image board, Ylilauta, chose to start selling “gold” accounts that give more features than regular users get.
These kind of pay-to-browse solutions will become more common if everyone just keeps blocking the advertisements. This will most likely lower the common creativity and create a higher thresold of joining a community of same-minded inviduals.
Tuomas Siitonen
Editor of Photour.net, journalism student and a voluntary administrator at Ylilauta.org, Northpole.fi and Naamapalmu.fi
Disclaimer: Photour does not make actual profit from the advertisements, the small amount which it creates goes straight go into running expenses such as new costumes for the models, Photour-related gas expenses and so on. In the long run I’m losing money here, but that’s to be expected at the current state; I love photography. The ads are there to smooth out the sure-to-be expenses.
Have fun driving potential readers away with comic sans. Not going to uninstall AdBlock or disable it.
That is what I will most likely do.
I must say, with all modesty, if one is not willing to add an exception for a small site such as this with extremely reasonable ads, I am not disturbed to lose such a reader; it is a choice we made when we put on the Comic Sans MS. And to be honest, it’s really, really funny.
I’ve already disabled some unsuitable and flashy advertisements via AdSense’s control panel, as I’ve received negative feedback about them. And that’s what I shall do in the future.
That comic sans is a neat trip. Was in fact removing ad-block for you do have a purpose with small sites. In terms of HS, I use ad-block to make the page more viewer-friendly. It’s a shithole to try to read it with advertisements that are pagewide big.
Thank you.
As to Helsingin Sanomat and its advertisements, I actually tried the paid subscription of its web content. Every single ad stayed there nevertheless, thus I really had no reason to keep paying for it. It’s quite ridiculous.
I have adblock turned off for this site, so few ads here. and it’s a very nice site. and the Disclaimer tells it al, ty
Ok . I have adblock turned off for this site.
And add to favorite site ;)
I get at your page just by googling up “funny adblock message” – and stayed for a while (and bookmarked and turned off AB+ for this site ofc)….
I came across this page after seeing a number of sites changing to Comic Sans siting adblock as the reasoning. I quite understand your views and did disable adblock for your page but I want you to understand this:
Most people do not install adblock simply because they feel they have the god-given right to an ad-free internet. They install it to prevent invasive pop-ups that native pop-up blockers do not touch and stop drive-by installs that occur through those pop ups. It is more of a security feature for most users. Your site does not contain such nefarious advertising techniques but how is anybody supposed to know that before visiting?
I, for one, will not remove adblock per-se and until the internet advertising agencies and sites clean up their act, I could not recommend that anyone else do so either.
You are 100 % correct; and that is exactly the reason why I’ve stopped using AdSense on my newest publications. First off, using AdSense curated my content way too much with its automated boob-searching algorithms (yeah, those exist). Secondly its profit is very marginable on a small site such as Photour with 10,000-20,000 visitors each month – advertising my Patreon with a single, non-intrusive png file is way more profitable and user-friendly.
I am sorry that ADblocker conflicts with your wonderful site.
I just installed (2 days ago) because every sight even private started to get big banners and sounds all over them.
I attempted to find out how to add your site as an exception. I could not.
But what makes you think you are privileged to block advertising completely? And what makes you think you are privileged to disturb anyone with your ads, even if they are little and silent? I have the RIGHT of choosing what I want to see, and if I don’t wanna see your ad, you can’t force me.
But what makes you think that you deserve a site with no advertising? But what makes you think that you deserve 5 seconds from anybody’s time? Nobody forced you to create the web! Nobody forces you to keep it free! You are free to block adblock users, you are free to put a paywall, we are free to block any ad we see in our devices. Your page, my device. Evrrybody is freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee to block ads!!
True, you are free to do what you want with your device. Thus, I am also allowed to make loops and precautions (like Comic Sans MS) to persuade people to not use AdBlock.
I’m not saying that you’re forced to not block my ads, I’m just saying that it is my wish. And I’m giving it a little nudge with the Comic Sans MS thingy. Because it’s hilarious.
But on a whole new matter, thanks to Patreon, I’ve removed AdSense’s ads from Photour. I grew to really despise AdSense and its possible exploits. The final straw was a pop-under of asian ladies that took hours to trace and remove completely just from my side – Google’s reaction to the exploit was way longer and took multiple days. Now I use a still PNG image I’ve designed myself to know exactly what is shown. In the long run this has helped a lot and now Photour gathers 3–5 times users it did, when this article was written.