[fairliearrow2]

Many times I come across excellent videos where the instructor says "please don't block the ads; they are funding these videos".

Let's take a case in point. Jason Maranto has put an excellent video series on colour on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JasonMaranto/videos
He says in the first video that he is funding it through youtube ads. Now, I appreciate the amount of time that has gone into this. Nonetheless I say with reluctance that I will still block the ads on this site and on the rest of the internet. Why?

Is it my time/convenience/annoyance? No.

Is it because I fear malicious content in adware? Absolutely. I cannot risk my computer and the 1000's of dollars worth of software on it when there is some real nasty stuff out there such as cryptolocker. I cannot put my computer and files at that sort of risk.

I'd like to add another element to the issue as well. I DO give back to the internet. Each year I pick some free/opensource programs and donate some money to them. For instance I donated money this year to Wikipedia. So I am not a "taker". I give stuff back to the internet. I also when my time permits do projects such as Project Gutenberg.

I use Ghostery with Firefox. I think that I donated to that too. Or something similar. The tracking has got insane. gHOSTERY often blocks 28 to 30 trackers on a website! I HAVE to block ads with that sort of tracking around. I'd be bonkers if I didn't think that somewhere in that someone was acting maliciously. So sorry, I can't allow ads. Don't shoot the messenger. It's a wild, wild west out there in internet planet. As a broader issue it leaves the question open of how the internet will survive with people having to protect themselves from ads.

[Mihai]

Honestly I think you're wasting energy here. I do have an ad blocker but for the simple reason that it makes pages load faster, closes pop ups and makes pages look cleaner. And the youtube ads at the beginning of videos? How are they going to hack you with that?

[fairliearrow2]

I don't know. They will find a way to hack me.

[Half Life]

I have an ad blocker installed and I use it on any sites that are not reputable, or that I am not familiar with. However I do have some sites that are specifically funded through advertising so I keep it off for those sites.

I prefer advertisements to fundraising drives -- mostly because I hate asking for money. The ads on YouTube were mostly a test to see about the viability of doing longer series of free tutorials for the software I teach. The idea being that I could "give away" a full length series on Maxwell Render 3 (or any other software I teach) and everybody would be happy -- I get paid for my time, viewers get free content, and advertisers get eyeballs.

The jury is still out on the financial viability of this avenue of distributing tutorials...

Bottom line: feel free to block ads on my videos -- I won't take it personally. However do know that you are directly causing me to not do more "free" content.

Best,
Jason.

[hatts]

Wait. Aren't ad statistics, and therefore $$$, determined through number of clicks?

That would mean that turning adblock software off is actually no more noble than having it on, if you're not clicking ads anyway.

No?