Designing an audio adblocker
A response to some of the many arguments expressed in this thread:<p>&quot;Then don&#x27;t listen to it&quot;. Alternatively, I&#x27;ll do what I do now, which is listen to it but skip the ads and wait for software that can automatically skip them to come around, which is the same thing I did for websites.<p>&quot;That&#x27;s selfish&quot; Yes, just like the millions of people who use adblock software on their browser. Of course adblock software came after web browsers built in popup blockers in response to the X-10 Spycam being 50% of web advertising circa 2001-2003, so really you could argue the web browsers are selfish and we&#x27;re all selfish if we don&#x27;t turn off the popup blockers. Really, even if a website says &quot;By using this website, we&#x27;re going to install malware on your computer&quot;, you&#x27;re selfish if you reject the malware. If selfish means that I make decisions that make things better for me at the expense of others, then yes, I am selfish when it comes to ads. I view ads as toxic and bad for my health, and I take measures to avoid them.<p>&quot;But it&#x27;ll lead to the collapse of podcast publishing&quot;. Maybe. Of course publishers repeatedly said adblocking would lead to the collapse of the web, and as best as I can tell mostly idiots doing a pivot to Facebook Video caused what collapse did occur (because, as selfish actors, they pursued a greater revenue stream at the expense of quality and integrity -- oops, turns out there&#x27;s no money there because the numbers are all fake.), Adblocking also ushered in sustainable models for journalism, blogging, etc. Certainly all the websites I read have found alternate revenue models just fine. Maybe that&#x27;s because the ones that didn&#x27;t went under, but I apparently didn&#x27;t notice.<p>If podcasting collapses and goes back to the dark ages of being a non-commercial hobby medium like it was three years ago, like, okay?<p>&quot;Stop comparing podcasts to websites, podcast ads aren&#x27;t as bad&quot; Maybe, but you don&#x27;t get to decide for me my threshold for ignoring or blocking ads. Ads weren&#x27;t as bad when I started using AdBlock Plus in 2004, but they were bad enough for me to decide to use it. Others may have had their breaking point later because they are less sensitive to ads. Some people might still browse the web with ads on and claim they don&#x27;t care. You do you.<p>The strange thing to me is people expressing that they&#x27;d rather block ads, but they&#x27;re too noble to do so, so they get mad at others for blocking ads? Uh, okay?