Remove Hotslogs AdBlock redirect

Hotslogs recently decided to redirect everyone with an adblocker to a different page. I don’t think this was a very good move by Ben Barrett, the creator of Hotslogs, since the page is dependant on the user’s content.

Note: I’ going to rant a bit about the whole topic. If you don’t care about this stuff and just want Hotslogs to ‘work’ again, simply scroll down to the code block below.

Being a content creator myself I realize that it can be quite annoying to have such a tech-savvy audience but I’d argue that the people who use an adblocker aren’t the ones who were going to click your ads in the first place.
Locking content from users will simply lead to less people uploading their replays to Hotslogs and this will cause the data to be less reliable. Less reliable data means fewer people will find hotslogs useful which will lead to less people uploading their replays, rinse and repeat.
I really hope it goes well for Ben Barrett, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what he does for the community and think he overall did a great job with hotslogs. But I simply disagree with the way he handles the situation.

The whole online advertisement is a vicious circle. What lead us to adblockers in the first place was the fact that ads became more and more aggressive over the time. I remember the times of endless popups and unbelievable annoying flash ads. While popups aren’t really a problem anymore, flash ads still are (and Hotslogs uses them, too!).
It really is like an arms race and nobody can really win.
There are a few ways websites try to circumvent the whole adblocking dilemma:

1. Show even more ads to reach the people who don’t use an adblocker in the first place
2. Use partner programs to generate their revenue
3. Block users who use Adblock

I don’t like any of these methods. The first one will simply lead to more people using adblockers because they get too annoyed by the intrusive ads.
The second one often leads to superficial content which only tries to sell you something and you often won’t even realize you just clicked an ad.
The third one leads to what we see right here: an arms-race.

The only somehow good solution I see is creating sponsored content which is clearly labeled as such and using ads which really fit the theme of the site and aren’t as intrusive as the ads we see now. I realize that creating ads like this takes a lot more time and effort and many people (including myself) aren’t going to invest that time.

So: Let’s continue the arms-arce!

How to remove the redirect using Tampermonkey

I wrote a small script which tricks the website into thinking that the ads actually loaded, you need tampermonkey for it though:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Hotslogs AdBlockBlockBlock
// @version      0.6
// @description  No more redirects!
// @author       themutegamer.com
// @match        https://www.hotslogs.com/*
// @grant        none
// @run-at       document-start
// ==/UserScript==

MonkeyBroker = {
   slots: {},
   bidHelper: function() {
   },
   go2: function() {
   },
   addSlot: {},
   regSlotsMap: [],
   defineSlot: {},
   version: 9001
};
pbjs = {
    libLoaded: true
};

$(function() {
    $(".advertisementBannerMonkeyBrokerTop").height(1);
});

I’m really interested in your opinion regarding this topic! Ads are somehow vital for the internet whilst often being an annoyance and I think it’s hard to find the sweet spot. What do you think?

Update January 22, 2017:

The redirect system on Hotslogs was changed and the site switched to https, so the old script was broken. I decided to continue the arms race and updated the script above. Have fun!

Update March 21, 2017:

Updated the script again.

Update March 23, 2017:

And again!

Update April 6, 2017:

Once more!

Update April 14, 2017:

Again!