Commentary

Ad-Blocking Villains Add Hush Money To Their Protection Racket

It just stinks, the whole thing. Not only is Adblock Plus a protection racket -- it has now made a deal with Flattr, a micro payment service. The principle is -- you can block adds and then check a few fractions of coins in your wake as recompense. It's the mob equivalent of a protection racket chucking around some hush money to smooth things over, isn't it?

The exact details of how the deal with AdBlock Plus and Flattr will work are unclear, but it appears that people will be able to put aside a sum that is then split between the sites they go to most. It's worth pointing out at this point that Flattr has been set up by the person behind Pirate Bay, which allowed copious amounts of illegal file-sharing, so why this new start-up can position itself as some middle ground that looks after publishers is unclear. 

So we effectively have the two enemies of content creators and publishers coming together to launch Flattr Plus as a browser extension. 

On the one side, Adblock Plus is pretending to be the Web user's friend, blocking them from those pesky ads that actually pay for free content -- but at the same time, there's a rub. Publishers that are big enough can pay to let ads through. So the Web user is protected from ads when Adblock Plus hasn't been paid off. Then we have a way for Adblock Plus to clear its conscience. It will open up a mechanism for people to make micropayments. Curiously, it would appear this is based around the budget the Web user puts aside for content.

There are just a couple of glaring problems. You're asking people who are happy to cut out the way that great free content is paid for by blocking ads to recompense the people they have just ripped off? What's more, you're asking them to decide how much they should put aside for content and how much should go to various publishers? Tell me, what exactly was wrong with the way the market decided how valuable a person's attention by allowing publishers and advertisers to set a rate for putting messages in front of you? Why take power away from the market that is based on data to the whim of a person who quite clearly doesn't feel the need to adequately compensate publishers because they're actively blocking the ad which help keep the lights on?

So here is a message to both parties. If you're taking payments to let some adds through, you really are running a protection racket. if you are relying on people who block ads to suddenly get a conscience and throw fractions of coins in their wake, you're deluded. If people don't want ads, that's fine, but then so too is publishers not serving them free content. 

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