Forum owners, please ban links to ad-sites

[Oshimaida]

Dear forum owners,

I kindly ask you to improve this forum by banning abusers whose links lead to sites like Adfly. As I and many other people will not go to such sites, posts with links to them are more or less useless and should be considered spam. And spammers should always be treated like the greedy [censored] they are: tarred, feathered and then banned.

 

Regards,

Oshi

[bphlpt]

@Oshimaida, While I understand, respect, and agree with your belief that spammers should be banned, I'm afraid that I don't agree that Adfly qualifies as a spam site that justifies such punishment as you suggest.  Yes, it is an ad site, but, in my experience, it does not cause anything to be downloaded onto your machine, nor does it open any popup windows, nor does it cause any further ads to appear in your browsing experience, nor does it cause you to receive any unwanted emails, if you do not click on any of the ads presented.  Not only that, but it is very easy to avoid the ads completely if you have an ad blocker installed in your browser, as I personally believe that everyone should have for their safety and to make their browsing experience more pleasant.  Even if you choose not to have an ad blocker, you merely have to wait about 5 seconds and then click the "Skip Ad" button and you will be promptly redirected to the page you were trying to view.

I also understand your opinion that if someone wants to make a little bit of money that it is more up front to sell their product rather than use an ad site like Adfly, but not everyone agrees with that approach.  I don't know the true percentages, but while I know you are not alone, I would imagine that you are in the minority.

Unfortunately, ads are a fact of life in this materialistic world of ours.  From print ads, telemarketing mailers and calls, radio and TV ads (Wasn't cable TV originally marketed as a way to avoid at least some ads by paying for the service up front?), billboards, ads embedded in YouTube videos, ads plastered on web pages taking up more room than the content, ads included on web search pages, and even ads included in this, and many. many other forums.  So while I agree with your opinion that they are greedy [censored] (this forum being an exception, of course), I'm afraid we are stuck with ads.  For your web browsing sanity, I strongly suggest getting an ad blocker.

So, you can avoid "abusers" that use sites such as Adfly, you can tolerate the brief ad for 5 seconds if you wish to support the "abuser" (I believe that they receive some very small fraction of a cent per each ad viewed), or you can use an ad blocker and merely have to wait the 5 seconds with a blank screen (and I think the "abuser" receives nothing).  It is your choice.  It is a very small annoying inconvenience, but I don't think it is spam.

Others are encouraged to voice their opinion.

Cheers and Regards