Disable the Ad-blocker

Nothing is for free.  When we take what we think is free, we pay pack through other means.

Firefox is one of my favourite browsers.   What I love about it, is that it's customisable with plugins.  One of my favourite plugins was the adblocker.  I never liked reading pages congested with ugly ads.  Through bad past experiences with ads that were really viruses in disguise, I never thought I would one day advocate the display of ads on websites.

It was several years ago when I gradually understood the importance of ads to the survival of websites, especially those that provide articles, reviews, forums and other content without fee.  We have also come to expect these things for free.  However, we must acknowledge that few would work for no pay.  Maintaining and creating content for websites is work, just like the regular jobs we do.  Surely, they must get/be given something back in return.

Wikipedia, for example, refuse to host ads on their pages.  Recently, up until the new year, they displayed a banner on top of their pages urging for donations.  They were in the red.  Wikipedia is an immensely popular site, the amount of content it hosts is enormous, the amount of traffic going through its site must cost a lot in bandwidth, and the amount of work needed to maintaining and vet the content must be enormous.  If they had supported ads on their site, they would be insanely rich.  But instead, they chose not to, for the readers' benefit.  What they did, I felt was noble.  Wikipedia is indispensible when it comes to doing research, and I acknowledge that I've benefitted a great deal from what it offers.  So I donated.  And it felt great.

Not all other websites that offer free content can afford to survive solely on donations.  Hosting ads is a way for them to earn some revenue and that helps to pay for hosting, content creation and maintenance (these equate to bills which must be paid in order for websites to continue functioning).  

Yes, some sites have more traffic, so they earn more through ads.  I'd say the amount of traffic and revenue it enjoys equates to the amount of work they have to put it, but also to the quality of its content.

So... I disabled my adblcker.  (I do enable it when I visit sites that I feel are are suspicious.)  

The pages I browse now, contrary to what I expected, seem to load faster than usual.  And it feels great to give back!