Ad blockers hijack your browser. Do a little research on what they add in the background, much of it hidden, unwanted and the possible issues that can result.
If you know what you're doing by a custom install and pay for an established version, then fine. The free versions with easy install, beware.
If you go to add free sites, your browser, which has been hijacked with the ad blocker is running in the background. Think turning it off stops all activity by the ad blocker? It's spying on you're activities, taking notes.
Spy on me and you will go blind.
Ad blocking has become a business opportunity, and the publishers and advertising networks publishers aren't happy about it. "You have a third party disrupting a business transaction. They are throwing a monkey wrench into the economic engine that's driving the growth of the Internet," the IAB's Zaneis says.
Ad blocker vendors are pursuing a range of different business models, some of which have attracted money from angel investors and venture capital firms that hope to profit as the adoption of the tools continues to expand.
The most controversial business model, put forward by Adblock Plus, offers to help publishers recapture ad impressions lost to its product by signing on to its Acceptable Ads program. To qualify, a publisher's ads must meet Adblock Plus' conditions for non-intrusiveness and pass a review by the open-source community before being approved. Adblock Plus then adds the site to its whitelist. Ads on whitelisted sites pass through Adblock Plus's filters by default (although users can still change the settings to ignore the whitelist).
The catch? Adblock Plus charges large publishers an undisclosed fee to restore their blocked ads.
Faida declined to disclose how his firm determines who pays or the fee structure, other than to say that it varies with the company's size and the work required to include the publisher's ads in its whitelists. Tim Schumacher, the founder of domain marketplace Sedo and Adblock Plus' biggest investor, says some companies have been asked to pay flat fees, while other contracts have been "performance-based" -- that is, linked to the volume of recaptured ad impressions and associated advertising revenue. Currently, 148 publishers participate in the Acceptable Ads program; 90% of participants in the program aren't charged at all, Schumacher says.
And getting into the Acceptable Ads program isn't easy. According to Adblock Plus, it rejected 50% of 777 whitelist applicants because of unacceptable ads; the overall acceptance rate stands at just 9.5%.
Make ads that people are interested in seeing.
Point is twighead, ad blockers do just that, they block many unwanted adds. They accomplish little in improving or speeding up a connection.Background activity by the blocker can even slow things up at times. You won't see many of the obtrusive adds, the time it takes to load pages can be sped up, it is not always the case.
On Tuesday, Facebook, which has 1.7 billion users, announced that it’s taking this battle even further, in a way that only it can: with the latest version of its Web site, at least on desktop computers, Facebook cheekily defangs blockers entirely and serves its ads exactly where they would have been blocked.
Websites are blocking ad blockers ! It's all out war !
As much as i am enjoying the diamond membership, i am still on the fence about some things. Yes, i knows its only $99/year. But some things dont sit right with me:
1. Reporting spam.
I was diligently reporting the indian spam in the "Report spam here" forum. After doing this for awhile, i get a reply that says dont report the indian spamming here?
2. Reporting site violations.
Apparently premium members get priority when reporting site/toc violations. That i dont understand.
3. Tactics Trainer.
The problems seem ridiculously easy for the rating they are given. I do not need, nor want the ego feed that comes with the mindset of "easier is better" I prefer learning, and increasing my chess knowledge over having my ego stroked.
4. The Forums.
Honestly...what more needs to be said? I have seen more mature/informative postings on yahoo chess. I mean seriously...what is the point with all of these "Count to..." "Hi" "LOL" "I was hacked" "My opponent cheated" "Why is my connection so slow on my phone?" Seriously?...its a phone.
Speaking as both a member and a moderator, let me say that I've seen your reporting of spam and have been able to locate and disable some of these spam irritants very quickly and easily thanks to your efforts. The so-called "Indian spammers" should indeed be reported in the Spam Reporting thread. Somebody probably just got their wires crossed.
There are absolutely no preferences given to premium members over general members when it comes to reporting site violations. Any action is always based upon the nature of the violation itself and not on who reported it or who was reported. Sometimes it's a slow and tedious process rather than a lightning bolt from Mt. Olympus.
I don't know much about TT.
I'd played at Y! chess as well as at a dozen other sites and participated in their forums during the last 20 years. Yahoo forums couldn't even hold a candle to the forums here. In fact no chess forums anywhere have the diversity and potential we have here. Sure, there are plenty of ridiculous threads and a lot of nonsense I would also like to see gone but there are interesting threads, valuable threads and informative threads as well. Of course, such things start with the members who start the threads. Try making some such threads and see how many people you can get to follow you're lead.
As much as i am enjoying the diamond membership, i am still on the fence about some things. Yes, i knows its only $99/year. But some things dont sit right with me:
1. Reporting spam.
I was diligently reporting the indian spam in the "Report spam here" forum. After doing this for awhile, i get a reply that says dont report the indian spamming here?
2. Reporting site violations.
Apparently premium members get priority when reporting site/toc violations. That i dont understand.
3. Tactics Trainer.
The problems seem ridiculously easy for the rating they are given. I do not need, nor want the ego feed that comes with the mindset of "easier is better" I prefer learning, and increasing my chess knowledge over having my ego stroked.
4. The Forums.
Honestly...what more needs to be said? I have seen more mature/informative postings on yahoo chess. I mean seriously...what is the point with all of these "Count to..." "Hi" "LOL" "I was hacked" "My opponent cheated" "Why is my connection so slow on my phone?" Seriously?...its a phone.
Speaking as both a member and a moderator, let me say that I've seen your reporting of spam and have been able to locate and disable some of these spam irritants very quickly and easily thanks to your efforts. The so-called "Indian spammers" should indeed be reported in the Spam Reporting thread. Somebody probably just got their wires crossed.
There are absolutely no preferences given to premium members over general members when it comes to reporting site violations. Any action is always based upon the nature of the violation itself and not on who reported it or who was reported. Sometimes it's a slow and tedious process rather than a lightning bolt from Mt. Olympus.
I don't know much about TT.
I'd played at Y! chess as well as at a dozen other sites and participated in their forums during the last 20 years. Yahoo forums couldn't even hold a candle to the forums here. In fact no chess forums anywhere have the diversity and potential we have here. Sure, there are plenty of ridiculous threads and a lot of nonsense I would also like to see gone but there are interesting threads, valuable threads and informative threads as well. Of course, such things start with the members who start the threads. Try making some such threads and see how many people you can get to follow you're lead.
Thanks for the reply. Regarding your answer about reporting spam. Here was the reply i received, for reporting spam in the "Report SPAM here (Not cheating, Not abuse, ONLY spam)"
[Something is being done, and most of them get caught before anyone can see them, but some slip through - LPS]
[The reason this spam exists is because there isn't any moderator on line at the time. As soon as one comes on line, they'll look in General Discussion, see it, and delete it. You don't need to report it here - it would be more helpful if you only reported spam in unusual places, such as the comments of an article, blog, Tactics Trainer, Daily Puzzle, etc, where the moderators don't frequent - David]
[Once more, in larger font: no need to report molvi, babaji, lovesolution spam from GD. See above - LPS]
What is the purose of having a Report spam here section, if youre going to be told not to report spam here? And if this was a mistake, wouldnt it seem that the cprrect thing to do would be to let the member know that a mistake was made, and an apology/explanation given?
Regarding no preference being given to premium members when reporting things, this is what the chess.com website says:
"Premium Chess.com members get priority support"
How else is this supposed to be taken?
Actually, I agree with you totally on both the spamming and the nonsense posting issues. Apparently there are those who disagree with us.
I don't know about the priority support unless it refers to technical problems- which I didn't think we were talking about- but I can say when we discuss issues in the forums, the status of those involved usually isn't relevant.
Ad blockers are one of the greatest things in human history. One thing I cannot stand is having goddamn advertisements and commercials shoved in my face. I won't watch table. I only download/netflix/hulu/stream/amazon my tv/shows. I read books, and only things without ads. Don't shove an ad in my goddamn face. If I want to buy something I will, or I'll go looking for what I want. I cant' stand ads. Ad blockers make for a far more peaceful life.
No doubt preference is given to paid members in numerous ways.
The most obvious is preferential treatment when it involves breaking TOS.
I read where a member posted a private message from staff, that staff will "look the other way" regarding opening a 2nd account for paid members, as long as the account wasn't used to cheat in chess games !!! True !!!
lately logging in, reading news and forums has been working fine. but for when I go to my daily games, they wont load. After several pop ups saying page is unresponsive, minutes later it finally works. Happens every time.
Sorry to hear that! I'm not in any daily games at the moment, but I've never had that problem. Maybe you've already done this--so pardon me if it's redundant advice--maybe you need to try a different browser, update Java, etc. All the normal things to try when a website seems flaky. Good luck, regardless.