The future of ad blocking | Hacker News Reader

The future of ad blocking

freedom-to-tinker.com

20 pointsAndrewDucker8 comments

Dupe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14116413

uBlock Origin in Firefox on Android still seems quite effective against ads on Facebook

I find extreme stances towards ads somewhat silly. If you're consuming a free service like Facebook, it's reasonable for the provider to show ads along with it. As long as they're not intrusive, taking extreme measures to hide them seems a bit unfair.

I'm also using ad blockers, because some websites just go way too far. But I wouldn't consider Facebook one of them.

I'm curious why you think it's "unfair". Can you give an argument why Facebook owns the attention of its users?

You're not forced to consume the service. If you do, you "pay" by seeing ads.

Imagine you play in an amateur football team and get provided with sportswear by a sponsor, but it has their logo on it. Now it also wouldn't be fair to rip those off.

Show me the signed contract. With a promotional deal with sportswear there is a contract, where's the contract here?

Let's stretch this analogy a bit. Let's say I watch broadcast television with ad breaks. Except every single ad break I either go to the kitchen to get a snack, go to the bathroom, or go do something else. Every time completely missing 100% of the ad. Is this "wrong"? Did I not "pay"? Why? Would the broadcaster be legally within their rights to come to my home strap me into a chair and force me to watch 15 minutes of ads (that I missed) for every hour of content I watched on their network? Would they be within their rights to send me a bill for the content because I decided to spend the time urinating instead of consuming their advertisements?

Ad tech is a nightmare. Since advertisers and publishers failed to listen, most users are now lumping all online ads into the same categories of security and privacy risks. The "free" ad supported biz model is broken.

Browsers are “user agents”. Their role is to act on behalf of the user. Not the site operator. I think it really is as simple as that.

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