Dear Internet Advertisers

[music | Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - All Tomorrows Parties]

This week both Ars Technica and Fark, both of whom get decent traffic, have basically begged users not to use ad blockers. I think people would be less likely to use ad block if your ads didn't kill our browsers, below are some examples.

On Fark, the square ad at the top of the right-hand navigation bar demolishes WebKit based browsers on Linux. Doesn't matter what the ad actually is, but if I hit Fark in Arora or ReKonq without Flash turned off, they die as soon as they hit that ad, every single time, write it down. Fix that shit.

Sprint ads. Sprint ads have been consistently crippling Mozilla based browsers on Linux as well, both Firefox and Flock. "Occasionally", using autoscroll (mid click scrolling), the browser will just crawl and become unresponsive. It will continue to slowly scroll until the ad is off the page, then become responsive again. I can't tell if this happens on Mac, since I mainly use Safari.

Holy fuck, it's the Perfect Storm(or perfect Curve I guess)! Luckily this session is in Chrome on a Mac or else my machine might have just shot itself in the face

I realize these are both Flash issues, and that the state of Flash on Linux and Mac is pretty abysmal, I use both platforms. So…. you want people to stop blocking your ads? Show ads that don't break my goddamn computer, is it a deal? Maybe stop dealing Flash ads? JS only? Maybe?

Now, I honestly don't use ad blockers. In the case of Arora or ReKonq, the only way is to turn off Flash, which is annoying, and in a general sense I don't mind getting ads. I do hate ads that break my browser, or which open popups, resize my browser, redirect me, etc. Stop that shit Fark, stop trying to open pop-ups, and fix the ad in the right-hand nav on the homepage and we'll be buds.

One more time: Don't complain that no one wants to view your ads when your ads are harmful.