Moderators from one of Reddit's biggest online communities plans to ban links from publications that demand readers to stop running ad-blockers on their sites.
The ban has been put up for a vote among subscribers of Reddit's popular technology subreddit, /r/technology, which has more than five million subscribers, and the idea seems to be gaining a lot of support, according to Business Insider.
The thread — which is also considering a ban on pay walls, such as those used by the Wall Street Journal — has been upvoted by nearly 90 percent of users clicking on the forum.
In a message posted Sunday, /r/technology moderator "creq" wrote:
"It has come to our attention that many websites such as Forbes and Wired are now requiring users to disable ad blockers to view content. Because Forbes requires users to do this and has then served malware to them we see this as a security risk to you our community. There are also sites such as Wall Street Journal that have implemented pay-walls which we were are also considering banning.
"We would like all of your thoughts on whether or not we should allow domains such as Forbes here on /r/technology while they continue to resort to such practices.
"Thank you for the input."
Ad-blocker users tend to be young, male and tech-savvy, according to a February report by PageFair and Adobe, estimating 200 million ad block users worldwide every month.
Researchers found that publishers did not have any problems getting users to turn off their ad-blockers when accessing their sites (for example, 42.3 percent either disabled ad-blocker or whitelisted Forbes), but the idea may not bring success in the long run.
Some users turn their ad-blockers back on once they get through the initial ad-blocker wall, while others just get their news somewhere else.
An increasing number of publishers have begun blocking readers who use ad-blockers, including Forbes, GQ, City AM, the Washington Post, the Daily Telegraph and Bild.
Some Reddit users have commented about whether websites like these should be banned entirely or tag them with words such as words such as "NoAdblock," "Paywall" or "Not Safe for Browser" instead, so users know what they're clicking on.
