Just because the provider wants you to see information in a specific way, that does not mean that it is the best way for the individual to see it (and is often not).

Along the lines of what Matt said:
There are malware, privacy and time issues with receiving all web content unfiltered.

Focusing on privacy – there are many tracking services out there such as google-analytics, doubleclick, 2o7, quantserv, etc… that use ads and other web content to uniquely track users across many different sites.

Looking at my ABP-Tracking-Filter stats, I see several thousand blocks for each of the major trackers in the past few months.

Even if you trust (all of) these companies to only use the data properly, which I don’t, information has a tendency to get out or fall into the wrong hands. I think it is my responsibility to myself as a tech-savvy person to shield myself from this as much as possible.

I have been turning off 3rd party cookies for years, and blocking unwanted content is another way to do this.

Incidentally, I do not give real information to supermarkets for value cards etc… for the same reasons. And am a big fan of sites like BugMeNot.

To my point though, if you worked for an advertising agency that made TV commercials, you better be watching those commercials. I feel like I’m in the same boat.

My question is, do you use a DVR to fast forward through TV comercials?

1. It’s your right to do so and I think you should be allowed to change your view of the content to however you please, if you choose to do so.

2. Good point. Google Ads and Doubleclick control many of the ads on the web and I guess I shouldn’t judge a site so quickly if these ad servers serve up some annoying ads. On the other hand, if these servers continue to push annoying ads and the site owner chooses to continue using this ad server, I will take my views elsewhere.

3. I commend you for whitelisting scripts so that you can fully control the security of your machine. What you do, however, is a rarity amongst web users. Regardless, your right about the security aspect even though I think you’re being a bit paranoid. Unless you’re downloading files or randomly clicking on links, you should be ok.

As I said, it’s everyone’s personal choice regarding ad blockers. I just don’t like them for my web browsing.

1. It is my computer, my internet connection, and my browser. I will control the content that I see on the internet. If want to view your site through an RSS reader, I will. If I want to write a GreaseMonkey script to reorganize your site, I will. I choose how I receive my content. So, if I don’t want to waste my bandwidth in downloading images that I do not want to see, it is my right to do so.

2. There is a matter of trust. Most sites are lazy and do not show their own ads. They rely on a third party to deliver their ad content. I may trust you, or any other first party site that I visit, but I don’t have to trust Doubleclick, or Google, or Yahoo. So, Ely, if your website wants to show me an ad, you are going to have to host it. I trust you to show me content that I may want to see, but I don’t trust Doubleclick enough to allow them to send me content. I especially don’t trust them enough to allow them to set a cookie on my machine. Again I control the content that is displayed on my machine.

3. I want my machine to be secure. The number one way that a machine gets a virus these days is by tricking a user to go to a site that contains a malicious script. I run a program that will whitelist scripting on only sites that I approve. You know what? Your website works fine without wordpress.com, polldaddy.com and google-analytics.com running their scripts. It does not impact my browsing experience at all. Perhaps I am being paranoid, but my machine is too important to me for it to be trashed by some some malicious code.

-Matt