Adblocking, Bleating And Bias

A few months ago, becoming fed up with having to negotiate a dozen or more pop up advert's and video's in trying to read routine web sites and becoming puzzled about why some of them reflected other interests, even for disused railway stations, I took advice.

A kindly software engineer who has been in the business for over a couple of decades, was involved in designing the first pop up things and who owed me a favour was happy to explain and advise.  He too was unhappy at the extent and use of this feature.  The original idea was for helpful and useful content but that's the way it goes.

He suggested that I should install ad' blocking software onto the machine and to be very careful of what you might allow.  This was because they were not just about peddling a product they were up to other things.  They were profiling, recording and storing information for all sorts of commercial and perhaps other uses.  It might even explain some junk in the post box never mind the emails.

John Whittingdale, now Culture and Media Secretary in our government, has popped up in the media to tell all, that I, that is a user of adblocking, am a threat to the viability of the media as we know it, I am worse than the music and other pirates of recent times, I am a thief in the night and I am depriving our worthy advert's industry of its bread, butter and jam.

Whitter's is one of the corporate lobbyists main stuffed dummies in the Cabinet.  You may think this view is biased and unkind, but if he can be unkind and insulting, then so can I, and I have been at it a lot longer than he has.  Bluntly he is wrong and only interested in doing favours for his financial friends.

A careful and informed case for the use of ad' blocking is made in this article in Open Democracy, if you read it then you may be scared out of your wits.  If so, and the writer does know what he is talking about, then you may consider your options.

The first might be to get the ad' block on as soon as possible.