Comment by bee_rider
1 year ago
Ad blockers are just the embodiment of the internet’s social convention: send whatever bits you want, and I’ll render them however I want. If somebody wants to sent me ads, I prefer not to render them. But they don’t burn my eyeballs out.
They are more like a picket fence, than a fortification with barbed wire and all that.
If a site is really persistent about circumventing my adblocker, they are basically hostile to me and I should just leave.
>They are more like a picket fence, than a fortification with barbed wire and all that.
I disagree. I consider an adblocker (Ublock specifically plus Cookie AutoDelete) like a condom for my web browser. The name adblocker is really a misnomer, since it blocks much more nefarious things like tracking and fingerprinting. The name comes from a time when the internet was much less hostile and adversarial towards its users. Additionally, browsing the internet in the EU is a miserable experience because of unrelenting and useless cookie popups, made worse when one manages cookies with CAD.
If all I had to deal with was just ads, at a reasonable volume, I wouldn't care so much.
I run ublock origin and noscript. So, my way of looking at it might be very influenced by the software I use.
But I think of these as pretty different use-cases. It is better not to run JavaScript at all from malicious sites, I think I put most of your “condom” use-case in there. Ublock is just there to make the site pretty.
> If a site is really persistent about circumventing my adblocker, they are basically hostile to me and I should just leave.
Since you're not generating any revenue and are costing them bandwidth, the site likely prefers it that way...
Yes, I agreed. To be clear I’m not doing the silly thing of threatening to leave a site I’m not going to pay for. I’m describing the result that makes everybody happy.
This reminds me of how it's said that threatening to hire a lawyer is meaningless. Actually hiring a lawyer is serious.
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There's a few sites I visit that show first party ads. They are all related to the normal audience of the site itself, rather than based on my history. I see this as a fair exchange.
> send whatever bits you want, and I’ll render them however I want
> If a site is really persistent about circumventing my adblocker, they are basically hostile to me and I should just leave
You need to pick one of these.
You either are ok when them sending you any bits they want and you render whatever you want, or not. These bits might influence your adblocker - you're free to overcome that and render it the way you want. Or not, if you're not willing to/ not capable to do that.
I don’t think that’s true. The first describes the social convention. The second describes a reasonable response to sites that don’t follow it.
I don’t think there’s anything immoral about engaging in the back and forth. I just think it isn’t worthwhile to go very far with it.