Unfortunately at this very moment, a number of people are innocently or knowingly doing one action that can have dire end results. Some software companies and corporations are deliberately sabotaging these Web resources and are at the heart of the problem. Are your own actions part of the problem? More specifically, do you try to block all ads no matter how benign they are. Worse yet, is it also your mission to get as many other people as possible to block ads too? Do you go on a crusade to inform people how to block all ads without regarding the consequences?

Some people get very fanatical about ad blocking wanting a free ride on the net. Well, I got news for those types of people, it costs other people time and effort to put up those resources that people love to use. The site owners work long hours and spent years building the resources people benefit from. Why would anyone want to take that for granted? It's atrocious for anyone to expect site owners to work for free unless site owners are willing to provide such services with zero compensation. Those kinds of people really baffle me and their attitudes towards the non-intrusive ads are upsetting.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do believe some services and information sites employ bad advertising methods by using huge intrusive animated flash ads, popup / popunder ads, and large intrusive looping animated GIF ads. I'm not advocating those types of ads—See topic "Stop Irritating Visitors w/Loud Advertisements" in the "Related Topics" of right column section on this page. Popups & popunder ads are unacceptable as are ThiefWare ads. In fact ThiefWare ads (a. k. a. spyware ads) are in a class that's worse than the typical popup ads. I can certainly understand using a popup blocker and spyware blocking of which I use myself. But, when people use ad blockers to remove ads embedded within pages, removing the non-intrusive text ads, that's where the line must be drawn.

There are a good number of sites that use responsible advertising techniques. There's no good reason to block them. If you find a site helpful and they use responsible advertising, you owe it to them to allow their ads. Look at it as your way of supporting the services you find helpful. At the very least you can choose to not go on crusades to teach other people how to blanketly block everything including the non-intrusive text ads.

If you are a person that doesn't want ads anywhere, then you should start paying for your content and services. Otherwise, don't be surprised when these services find ways to block you when you block their ads. Servers cost money to run and maintain them and cost time to create and maintain the services provided on them. Allowing a few text ads or a few simple static image ads to show within those pages is not too much to ask in return. It doesn't cost you anything monetarily to allow them.

If these software packages only blocked advertising via popups, popunders, animated flash, and ThiefWare that would be acceptable to many if not most of the site owners. This responsible ad blocking would also satisfy the users of these software programs. However, they block everything, even text ads. There's no good reason to block text ads and static image ads.

In conclusion, think about the resources that you use on the net. Do you want helpful resources to survive? If you want them to remain free of cost monetarily, then isn't it about time to accept a few innocuous ads for the privilege of viewing and using helpful resources? Show the people that maintain that online service that you respect what they are doing, that you appreciate their efforts to provide useful resources. By honoring the simple text ad or basic image ad, those site owners will continue to be able to provide services you find helpful.

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