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Comment by bachmeier | Hacker News Reader

And now you understand why George Akerlof was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. The only rational response for readers is to block ads on websites that don't take security seriously. Because there's no way for a website to signal that they've taken precautions to ensure ads are safe, it's rational for readers to assume all websites with ads are unsafe, and block ads everywhere. Ad-supported websites cannot exist.

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You must be a concealed carry pistol holder by the same arguments. You can't trust anyone out there. If one person is dangerous, anyone else can be.

What a wildly inaccurate analogy. The odds that the sometimes dozens of ad networks are collecting your data without your consent (which is legally not your property once they have it in the US) are hugely more likely than randomly needing to defend yourself.

Why would you even say that? Are you implying it's paranoid to block ads like there arent huge corporate and governmental data collection apparati in place?

The odds may be off, but the argument is still the same. If it weren't for the risk of accidentally shooting one-self, it is only rational to carry a gun in an environment where you do not know whether it is safe. So it is really hard to reach the social optimum ((almost) no guns) in this case, because each individual is incentivised to carry one everywhere.

While a little bit constructed, there are some parallels here.

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