Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Ads on Webpages: Going Too Far

I appreciate that, in a real sense, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone somewhere must cover the costs. So, too, I appreciate when I am surfing the net reading this and that without paying, that the costs must be covered in some manner. That's one reason I began subscribing to The New York Times and the Washington Post.

So I accept the need for advertising on the Internet. But some of it has gone too far, IMHO. When a pop-up ad suddenly appears to completely cover the screen and the article I'm reading, not when I first open the webpage but a minute into my reading the article, that is outrageous, even more so when the ad's close button is difficult to locate. And even more outrageous is when, while I'm reading an article on a webpage, a video somewhere obscurely located on that page starts to play, without my having initiated it. Not only must I stop reading to find the video to shut it off, but often it will restart, necessitating that I shut it off again. And, if I have multiple webpages open, sometimes I have no idea on which webpage the video is playing.


It appears that Apple, on its Safari browser, may take some steps to limit these practices. I sure hope so!