Get a proper job! Does the internet really not value your content?

Wow, sure is dusty in here! This is the first post I've made on the blog since 2012. Truth of the matter is when I have time to write these days, I'm writing for one of my three websites. This article doesn't really fit on any of my main websites though, so I decided to put it here.

The reason for resurrecting this blog is I wanted to weigh in a little on the adblocking debate. Like all small website owners, adblock is affecting me to one degree or another. I get why people adblock, but what's shocking is the vitriol filled responses you often get from readers around the internet when you suggest that adblocking isn't fair. "Get a proper job", "Take a reality check", "Adapt or die", these are typical things adblock users will tell you. For writers who work hard on their websites this can of course be exceptionally demotivating. Does the internet really not value your work at all? Let's look at the possible reasons people react like they do, examine the rationale (or lack thereof) behind their responses and see why you shouldn't feel quite so demotivated. 

Adblocking and the blame someone else psychology

Tell an adblock user that their actions harm the free internet and most are likely to lay blame at the advertisers door, rather than change their behaviour. We're all guilty of this to a degree. When we're told that something we enjoy doing is wrong or detrimental, most of us will try to shift the blame or find some other justification for our actions rather than change our behaviour. Did you download that film or TV episode rather than pay to watch it? It's not my fault, the studios charge too much, don't give me a convenient way to watch it legally, are all just tax dodgers anyway and so on. People originally installed adblock to block sites that had intrusive advertising. The fact that the large majority of sites that are worth visiting have advertising that can easily be ignored by anyone who isn't interested in it is neither here nor there to the average adblocker. He/she doesn't want the inconvenience of white-listing your site or the perceived inconvenience of turning off adblock entirely. Convincing users that adblock is bad for them and bad for the internet, is difficult. They're getting the same websites, just sans-advertisements, so where's the negative for them? It is difficult to really demonstrate to a reader how adblocking hurts your site in an affective way, short of shutting your website down entirely, which could be likened to cutting your nose off to spite your face.

The internet makes us invisible

Most of us have read Youtube comments and we've all seen in the media how the perceived anonymity of the internet brings out the worst in many people. Hate campaigns where users spurt the worst possible bile at whoever is in their cross-hairs at that point in time, threatening sexual violence, murder and other such depravity. This kind of behaviour goes on a lot less in real life, where you can see what effect your actions are having on an individual before you let your anger or disdain get the better of you. The same applies to a degree in the adblocking debate. Adblockers don't know you, they don't care about you and they don't spare a thought for you because your page is just a bunch of words on their screen that they take for granted.

It's my right!

This is an interesting one. You often see this argument that it's the right of the computer user to block adverts. "My internet connection, my PC, my packets, I have a right to protect it". The truth of course is there are hundreds of things you can do on your computer that are illegal or just downright rude. You have the right to download a videogame that you paid for, for instance, but who gave you the right to download the game for free from a pirate website?, nobody, that's who. The argument falls apart under technical scrutiny too. When you access my website on your computer, you are accessing a computer that's hosting my website. A computer I have to pay to use of course. If you adblock, you are effectively taking a copy of my website, altering it to remove the advertisements and then serving it to yourself. If you magically did this with a traditional newspaper or magazine you'd be sued for copyright theft, it wouldn't matter about your 'rights' to be protected from annoying advertisements. 

Just as when you visit a public location on the high street, the management has every right to refuse you admission if you are not abiding by their rules, so with that logic the webmasters rights to exclude you as a visitor are much stronger than the perceived right you may claim to have to block advertising on a site.

Ads are all scams/malware

This argument is related to the above and is often brought out when adblock debates arise on the internet. Some users will claim adblock is necessary because adverts contain malware or scams, but is there any truth in this claim?

Advertising on the internet is no different to any other kind of content. It can be malicious, it can be benign and honestly it can even be useful (I ordered a gift yesterday based on an Adsense advert I clicked, how about that?). Adsense is actually a pretty poor method of delivering malware because there is a strong paper trail back to whomever paid for the advert. Most malware you encounter on the internet is introduced to websites surreptitiously through things like hacking or cross-site scripting.

Despite this, I actually have some sympathy for this viewpoint. Mainly because of the con-trick I call the "Guess the download link". Why Google allows this to continue is a source of frustration to me and many other honest website operators. You've all seen the trick, offer some freeware for download, redirect the user to the download page then plaster the page full of Adsense ads that say "DOWNLOAD NOW" in big letters. The user then has to look extra carefully to pick out the real download link.

Google should ban this kind of deceptive advertising. Realistically it should already be banned in their terms and conditions (as you are not allowed to goad users into clicking an advert). It is time they cracked down on this as I can imagine it has promoted more than a few adblock installations. 

The enviable position

If you're writing or blogging online, the next time the vocal pro-adblock users tell you to "get a proper job", remember why you quit the day-job to become a writer in the first place. For most of us, it certainly wasn't because we'd become rich, though many, like me, at least hoped we could get by. Hopefully the main reason was because you love what you do and the sometimes long hours are tempered by the fact you have flexible work schedules, can work from home and genuinely enjoy your job. Make no mistake about it, there are people that envy that. There are plenty of people in the world with a worse job than you, plenty who work harder than you and probably people who survive on less than you. Of course, by doing what you do you are (or at least were) creating a whole new job for yourself, which helps the economy and keeps you out of an already competitive jobs market. The internet troll who just told you that you shouldn't be paid for your work might have just been chewed out by his boss over some trivial mistake. Never forget that writing should be enjoyable, don't continue to write if it isn't. You have to enjoy what you write about in order to write with passion, conviction and to stand out on the internet. As I'm reliably informed that the young people say, if you are in any kind of enviable position, "haters gonna' hate".

Vocal minority

It helps to keep a sense of perspective in any debate. Remember that the kinds of people who comment on internet forums, debates and whatnot are a minority anyway. While some anti-adblock experiments have been met with hostility, some actually reported that most users are happy to support the sites they enjoy. Ars Technica ran an experiment where they blocked adblock users from accessing content on their site. While some users reacted badly, many users whitelisted the site and a few even bought a subscription. As Ken Fisher explains in the article:-

"We made the mistake of assuming that everyone who is blocking ads at Ars is doing so with malice. As it turns out, only a few people are, and many (most?) indicated you are happy to help out. That's what led to this hopefully informative post." (full article here).

Adapt or die! Change your business model!

This is perhaps the most annoying viewpoint that you will find. The pro-adblock advocate who claims to know how you should be monetising your site. They will make suggestions like "ask for donations" or "if your content was good enough you'd be able to charge for it". Suddenly this user is an expert on internet marketing based solely on their opinion and because your monetisation model doesn't suit their viewpoint. This is like your climate change sceptic who suddenly decides he/she is a climatologist because it snowed last winter and that disproves global warming.

The donation thing has been tried. Pagefair, a company that specialises in adblock solutions, ran appeals for many months. The result? Only three users per million made any kind of donation (read the full report here). Who can blame them? What money we have to donate we might quite rationally conclude is better spent giving to charities that house homeless people or tackle poverty.

As for paywalls, frankly I do not want to do that. Putting content behind a paywall makes it so that only those wealthy enough to afford a subscription can do so. This goes against the principles of the open internet far more than any banner advertisement ever did.

Under the old business model, I could provide you with content, that you could view for free, any time you liked, and I could get compensated for my time and hosting costs through advertising. It was a win-win situation, a perfect business model that gave everyone what they wanted. Isn't it a shame to throw all that away and push the internet towards paywall content all because a noisy Flash banner once annoyed you on a website you can't even remember now?