A shiny new device named The AdTrap hit the market last month. This device sits between your computer and router. The box intercepts content sent by ad agencies and remove it before it can reach your computer. AdTrap is even able to remove the ads before youtube videos. Many people see this as a kick back against the targeted advertising and information gathering prevalent among internet advertising companies. While this device looks to be a powerful protection from advertisements agencies, it also has a potential to maim the internet. Many free web-services depend on ads to generate revenue. Websites will have to fight against the AdTrap by further intermingling ads among their content, resort to other more pervasive (and annoying) means of generating revenue, or cease to exist. The AdTrap may just cripple the internet with its snare.
http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/adtrap-ad-blocker-butkus-russell-online-advertisements/
While this device seems like it could offer some benefits to internet surfing, I do not see anything new that doesn't already exist in freeware. It reminds me of a product such as Adblock, which can be installed on any browser, and produces the same effect. The main difference being that I do not have to install yet another device in my home. While there may be a few additions that some of the software doesn't have, I don't really see this as anything particularly new. There may be some features that I am missing, but from this vantage point, all I am seeing is different packaging, same features.
ReplyDeleteI hope advertising becomes so easy to block that it will become worthless so websites will have to charge for use. If you're not paying for a product, you ARE the product. NPR is so much better than commercial radio, because their only motive is to produce good content. They have to produce such high-quality content that I'll voluntarily pay for it a couple of times per year. Occasionally I turn on commercial radio, and both the content and experience (because of commercials) is so awful I can hardly bear it. Let's have fewer, better services that we can choose to fund directly instead of getting sucked into link bait and sold to Google, DoubleClick, and literally hundreds of others.
ReplyDeleteI am also a fan of public radio and agree that the model creates better content, but at the same time I think it is a bit presumptuous to assume that consumers at large are willing to pay for content and that it would be good for the web. If you have run into the experience of the Wall Street Journal or other pay-walls, its incredibly frustrating in comparison to the free and open web and creates a dangerous incentive to create lots of walled-gardens on the web.
DeleteThe ability for anyone on the internet to create high quality content that can compete and monetize is a revolution. If that is best achieved right now through ads, then so be it. As the internet mature, I am confident we can find additional models that satisfy everyone's needs.
Using things like AdTrap and AdBlock is straight up piracy. The concept of "There's no such thing as a free lunch" especially applies to this concept, websites put up content with the expectation that those who consume it (us) will pay for it by at least tolerating the ads there. Putting up a blocker causes them to lose the revenue they'd gain from you viewing the ad, which means you stole the content.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to protest being the product, don't go to ad based sites.