File:Big black box urging "Please install Adobe Flash Player".png

English: Screenshot of online newspaper article.[1]. Article by Aftenposten, rendered in Firefox. Only the headline is shown here, as well as the article's non-working video, appearing as a big black box with an unlocalized encouragement to install Adobe's Flash Player. There is also a non-working ad at the top.

I think this is a clear example of what Tristan Nitot said in 2008: "You're producing content for your users and there's someone in the middle deciding whether users should see your content." The middleman here would be Aftenposten's video solution (presumably the origin of the unlocalized text).

In particular, if it can serve HTML5, but just won't let me have it because my user agent doesn't contain the string "iPad" (I should check that) (and evidently doesn't link to such a hypothetical HTML5 page either), that would arguably be denial.

My bigger concern is the motivation it gives users to install Flash: It's not really your choice. Vendor lock-in combined with the network effect is a strong mix. I call it "distributed vendor lock-in".

How strong is that motivation? Black boxes (or equivalent) of these proportions are becoming increasingly common on news sites these days, which I think tells something about their emphasis on video. In fact, in this case, the article itself reads like an advertisement for the video, without revealing the solution, so you have to see the video to not miss out on "this neat trick".

For a user having seen a couple of such websites, my estimate is: A temptation so sweet that it takes a fundamentalist's determination not to install Flash. Provided of course that Adobe supports your CPU architecture.