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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I wish newspaper subscriptions had simply evolved into “here’s an E-reader. All it will ever do is show you this week’s worth of newspapers we’ve delivered to you. When you unsubscribe we’ll want it back. Again, it will never do anything but show you the newspaper.”

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But even the newspaper itself was chock full of ads. Sometimes it was a full page ad. We seem to forget this in these discussions.

I have no issues with ad supported anything. I do have issues with the ad tech being used to have ads on a website. The actors running them have been shown to do very bad things at various levels from running malicious code, to running video underneath an image just to juice their numbers for charging their customers more. Because of their historical behavior, I will do everything in my powers to block them.

Create an ad system that is not evil, and I'll allow ads. Until then...

Those seem particular instances of adtech. Any service than runs malicious code in your browser is bad. I don't think websites are bad because some of them have malicious code.

I never claimed the sites are bad. I specifically said ad tech is bad. I block ads, not web sites. You're trying to make my comment into something it is not.

No, you've missed the point. You're saying all ad tech is bad because some has before served malware. I'm saying this isn't consistent - you don't avoid all websites because some of them serve malware.

No I block all ad ware so I can visit what ever website I want precisely because ad tech has shown itself to be malicious. Really not sure of your confusion on the point.

My point is: why do you visit websites when they've also been "shown to be malicious"?

Yeah, but newspaper ads weren't specifically targeted at you, and they were mostly full of the information you'd get directly from the source today - what movies are showing, at what time, or what hours that restaurant is open, or where the nearest "massage" place is. On that last one, the newspapers even did ads disguised as news stories. "Oh, good citizens, run far away from this desperate house of ill repute located at 123 Main Street, where just this past weekend the police found evidence of crimes against morality being committed. That's 123 Main Street, the green house with a blue door, not to be confused with 125 Main Street, the blue house with a green door. Yes, stay far away."

That would take a decade to turn a profit on each device. It is a cool idea, though - a glimpse of a world of friendly technology that will never happen

Back in the early Pocket PC days, I think it was called Microsoft Today would sync daily news stories to read offline (this was long before WiFi was affordable and ubiquitous).

I remember waiting for class in college and browsing stories and thinking that this was what the fire urn was going to be like for everyone. In some ways yes, but in most ways no.

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