Hacker News Reader

Comment by chris_engel | Hacker News Reader

So if I am using an ad blocker and dont see any ads at all, dont I just _cost_ google, facebook, etc. money from using their services and having them store my data?

What if the majority of people would block all ads? Wouldnt data collection become meaningless?

View on HN

> Wouldnt data collection become meaningless?

Data is used for more than advertising.

These data silos are enormous blackmail machines waiting to be activated. There is tons of evidence of crime, adultery, extortion, and all the other fun things humans get up to in there.

Google, FB, and the other big surveillance outfits protect this data now. Who knows what happens tomorrow, or if that protection is "enough", or if $nation_state will grab what's stored in their borders, or...

Building these blackmail machines is incredibly dangerous, _even if you completely ignore_ the garden-variety privacy problems they cause for "little people".

These scum companies use data gathered from your friends as well, so even if you block ads, they will still use data gathered about you to “improve” the ads your friends get.

Ads are much harder to block on mobile. Especially on iOS, it's nearly impossible to block ads in a native app. There are some tricks you can do with a VPN but the coverage isn't great and it's error-prone enough that I don't bother, which means casual ad-block users like my sister will absolutely never go that route. So to the extent that mobile is the future, it seems ad-blocking is not a long-term solution.

As much as I like iOS, I agree with you and I am still waiting for a good ad-blocking solution.

But I am not sure it's ever going to come. Many smaller devs and studios publish free apps which they monetise only with ads. Not sure Apple wants to scare off millions of developers by officially streamlining app ad-blocking.

On iOS, VPN remains the only good choice so far, sadly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com