Given their “proviso” for a whitelist so that your ads will
still be displayed when they’re installed, are adblockers nothing more than a
21st Century online protection racket?
By: Ringo Bones
The “whitelist” proviso of some leading adblockers out
there, the most notorious of which is Adblock Plus’ Whitelist that allows “acceptable”
ads to show or punch through once the Adblock Plus application is installed in
your personal computer or smartphone had many comparing it to an online
protection racket after it was leaked that if a company or agency wants to get
into Adblock Plus’ “Whitelist”, all they have to do is to pay the company who
runs Adblock Plus this amount of money to be included on their so-called “Whitelist”.
If this is not a bona fide protection racket, I don’t know what is.
As of late, the online adblocking industry had engendered a
so-called online adblocking arms race where some firms already have created and
successfully tested easily installable applications that can block the
adblockers for those firms who find that Adblocker Plus’ “Whitelist” fee just
too rich for their blood.
On of these blockers for adblockers applications is Page
Fair which according to the firm aimed to benefit small to medium scale mom and
pop online publishers and content providers to circumvent Adblocker Plaus and
other adblocker apps from depriving them of their revenue. Given that current
adblocker apps are a threat to online free enterprise comparable to Stalin era
Marxist-Leninist socialism, why are a growing number of netizens are installing
them in the first place?
The adblocker apps’ original raison d’être was to block
annoying ads from popping up when a typical netizen is doing online research. Sadly,
the latest versions of adblockers – especially those that are bundled with the
latest personal computer and smartphone operating systems are no longer
provided with an on-off switch. Worse still, unless you are a high level
information technology engineer who knows how to check the subroutine and / or source-code
of the operating system of the desktop personal computer, smartphone, tablet or
other smart device you are currently using, your device doesn’t tell you that
there is some form of adblocking application installed in the device you are currently
using to surf the web – it only tells you once you’ve visited an internet site
with an adblock detector that tells you that you can only proceed further once
you’ve turned off your adblock app. Sadder still, the latest adblock apps don’t
come with an on-off switch.
1 comment:
Wikipedia defines protection racket as a scheme whereby a group provides protection to a business or other groups through violence outside the sanction of the law. Substitute violence for ignorance or lack of skill makes adblockers a de facto online protection racket scheme.
Post a Comment