Let’s Block Firefox, That’s a Great Idea!

September 11, 2007

So Chris Soghoian today is reporting that there is a face off between the makers of Adblock Plus, the very popular Firefox extension, and an “obscure” web designer Danny Carlton. Danny was unable to pick out which visitors were using the Adblock Plus Firefox extention, so he just decided to go ahead and block Firefox all together. He even has an anti Adblock Plus campaign going on. If you try to go to his blog in Firefox you instead go here. This kind of blanket decision reminds me so much of the decisions that are happening with DRM, and net neutrality. Let’s take a look at why this is a horrible idea:

Not every Firefox user is an Ad Blocker. So now you are not only forbidding uses to your site, you are also pissing them off.
You are a web designer, you are suppose to be following and promoting standards. What does this say to your customers?
You are forcing users to use a less secure browser just to view your site.
If you are really worried about losing revenue, combat it in other ways:
- Make a membership fee
- Put all of your images and CSS at the root domain. So if they block www.domain.com with Adblock Plus they will block everything and then it’s their own choice to block your site.

The list goes on, but I really do not feel like getting involved I was just shocked to hear that this a practice that is being promoted with his campaign. My Dad always said “Doors and Windows are to protect you from honest people.” Does that means we should start creating houses that are just cubes? Seriously! Software piracy is huge amongst the Windows shareware community. Should I just forbid people from installing my application on Windows?

It’s an age old lesson: You are going to spend more time and money than it is worth trying to beat the bad guys, and in turn you are only going to piss off and drive away your customers. And at the end of the day… it’s all about the customers.