fishdan's Journal: Selectively blocking ads

I've been playing around with the newest version of firebird (so good!). Migrating my bookmarks was no problem, and I LOVE how easy it is to set up the toolbar and add in the full time tabbed browsing! that I've missed since migrating from Opera

The one thing that was painful in redoing was reblocking ads, using mozilla's "block images from this server" functionality.

I have been studiously trying to only block ads I find offensive, and to view/allow ads I deem as a "fair price" for the content I am viewing. This very rarely means I block images because I find the content of the ad offensive, but most likely means I find the way the ad is presented is overly irritating or deceitful.

But for sites whose content I truly enjoy, like The Onion, or boston.com I try to leave the ads unblocked, because I do want to contribute and support them. I currently have a cyclical nature of seeing a bad ad, blocking images from that server, then maybe a week later, letting them back in. If that server gives me another offensive ad, I'll block them again. There is no "method" to how long I'll block images from a place. For example, hotmail is out of control. I will never unblock hotmail because their ads are way to aggressive for me. I try to answer all the surveys on ads when they appear on myyahoo to let them know what I like and don't like. I don't know if it's working or not, but I find that I don't have to block ads on Yahoo as much as I used to.

I've already removed flash from my browsers (or refused to install it). My question to /.ers is how much are you trying to screen out ads, and are you rewarding companies that show "responsible" ads? Do you feel obligated to accept some ads with your browsing?

Ads

[rickymoz]

I'm not blocking ads from sites I like, but the traditional doubleclick and co. Which appear all over the places.

The most annoying and intrusive ads are those huge squares in the middle of the flow of some articles, which prevent "normal" reading. Those get a "block" immediately. Only problem, if they are flash ads... I'm really looking forward for a similar pref blocking flash on given servers (blacklist) or creating a whitelist for allowed flash content. Sometimes, flash applications, movies, e-cards, ga

Re:Ads

[fishdan]

You gotta check out the firebird [mozilla.org]. Install it and then get the Flash Click to View [mielczarek.org] extension. It's tremendous.

Get Firebird running

installl flash into the firebird plugin folder

Install Flash Click to View

voila! It get's my vote for best tool EVER, after the lever