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I don't know if they still do this, but not long ago they used to try and get you to switch off your ad blocker with an obnoxious message saying "Ads plant trees! We’ve detected that you are using an ad blocker. We plant trees thanks to income earned from ads. Please disable your ad blocker for Ecosia so that we can keep on planting."

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As a counter-argument, is it not a little obnoxious to use Ecosia with your ad-blocker turned on?

What's the point of using Ecosia if not to help them fund-raise for their environmental projects? Why not use Google or Bing directly (with an ad-blocker) and save the Ecosia the bandwidth costs?

You're right. I don't use it, and I don't promote it. But I don't think it's very clear to everyone who does that Ecosia needs you to click ads. Many environmentalists are also anti-consumerists, and I suspect would hesitate to use or promote this search engine if its reliance on advertising were made clearer.

I guess it's quite a difficult thing to communicate without encouraging users to click on ads, which presumably would get them in hot water with the ad networks.

no point in using it if you block ads?

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