Silicon Readers Back Decision To Kill Adobe Flash

The overwhelming majority of Silicon readers will be happy to see the back of Adobe Flash following the news last week that the company was preparing to end support for the plugin by 2020.

Flash first arrived on the scene more than 20 years ago, introducing a range of dynamic, interactive experiences that simply hadn’t been possible before.

But over the past 10 years, criticism has been mounting. Flash has come to be regarded as a system hog and a security threat. Browsers automatically block the plugin by default and web designers have moved onto new open web standards.

Quiz: What do you know about Adobe?

And our readers are against giving it a stay of execution. A staggering 82.8 percent said it was the right time to get rid of Flash and that it should have happened years ago.

The remaining 17.2 percent were against such a move, with 6 percent thinking it should happen in a few years, while 11.2 percent still want development to continue. This illustrates the existence of a community dedicated to Flash amid calls for it to continue as an open source project.

You can read more about this history of Flash here, and why our columnists think the web will be a safer place.

Our next poll focuses on more general cybersecurity issues – specifically which ones bother you the most. You can vote below and let us know what you think in the comments.