As someone who runs an ad-supported site, I would really prefer if you just blocked my ads and did not register fake clicks on them.
Ads are, to me, unsolicited. You can maybe imply that by visiting your site I'm requesting them, but that'd be twisting it. Whereas donation is more user-initiated and/or site requested.
Would you like to guess how our donations stack up to our ad revenue? We currently have to raise $200/month to break even.
I would be OK with ads that went straight to the site selling an item with no tracking other than click-thru stats but not using the IP address, not fingerprinting the browsers, etc.
It's sick that sites show one price to mobile users and another to desktop users. I've seen this by testing it myself. It's a sham. It's the seedy side of capitalism. Everyone should get the same price. Another reason to block ads, since allowing them means you're buying into the way they do business.
Nothing mean-spirited about blocking a very strong vector for malware, which we all know ad networks have become. I have a moral imperative to protect machines under my control, so we block all ads, disallow all tracking, use Disconnect, Ad Block Plus, and HTTPS Everywhere, along with other in-place tools to allow users a clean Internet experience. Let's not even mention how much bandwidth is saved by adblocking... That alone makes it worth it.
Meanwhile, unless this has something like >50% adoption, ad networks won't even notice.
Edit: When I say "people who run ads", I mean the ad networks, ad suppliers, etc.
If you've got ads on your site, you're someone that runs ads... Not that I disagree with your point.
Out of curiosity, which is cheaper?
I understand why you think this is unfair, but it just doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.
As you don't have any contact on your profile so there was no way for me to reach you. I even contacted YC admin and they confirmed you haven't left an email in your profile :( Since then I've been tracking your comments page to maybe catch you live.
So let's talk? I can answer any/all of your queries and the ones I don't know the answer to I can figure out. Think of me as no-obligation, friendly discussion to clarify all your doubts. I hope you see this message.
It's also just kind of mean. By design it only messes with the sites that you yourself think are worth visiting.
> It's the seedy side of capitalism. Everyone should get the same price
This rant against price discrimination seems like a tangent. The behavior you're describing is something e-commerce sites sometimes do. It doesn't have much to do with ads and blocking ads won't make hotels.com show everyone the same price.
I like the idea of an ad-free 'net, but it's not really up to me to dictate to site owners what they can do, which this seems to be.
--edit--
Having read the comment parallel to mine I'd like to say I agree that there are two sides to this - it may be mean spirited to use this plugin, but it's not exactly friendly to attempt to track everyone, all the time.
...
So, why..?