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Comment by ariwilson | Hacker News Reader

Do you want to start a tit-for-tat war? Publishers could redirect ads using their sites as a proxy.

There's no war. It's simple. I choose what I allow to run on my computer. End of story. It's the height of arrogance that all of these companies, both the publishers and the ad tech firms, think they can do whatever they want to users with no recourse. I bought the computer to serve my needs, I have control over how it functions to do so.

But if your usage of your computer that you bought depends on their servers, it seems they would have some sort of say in how you use it.

That is, they can negotiate with you using your desire to access their servers as leverage.

You can refuse to negotiate, in which case they can take steps to block your access to their server. You can use technological means to get around that, but then they can adjust their own technology to block your new strategy.

And then you're in a war.

There's a reason why protocols (such as HTTP) intended for use in the public space refer to a client connection as a "request". I am asking them for a specific set of data, they are welcome to choose whether to provide it or not. Once I've received it, and it's on my computer, I get to choose whether or not to let it run. In the case of advertisements, I have more security concerns than mere annoyance, so I choose to block them. If you don't wish to serve me content, go right ahead, just be aware that there is nothing you can do to force me to expose my system to your potentially malicious advertisements.

I wasn't saying that you're obligated to look at ads. I said that if you want to use someone else's servers AND want to block ads, you're going to end up in a technical war.

You said "there is no war", but obviously there is.

Your choices are:

* use the servers and look at ads * don't use the servers at all * use the servers and try to block ads

In this third option (which seems to be the one you chose), the people who own the servers can then try to block your access to the site. You can then try to circumvent that block, then they can try to block you again.

This is a war. You said "there is no war".

The subtext here is that, grand proclamations about sovereignty over your computing devices aside, by making other people's servers a crucial component of your computing you are ceding to them some leverage and therefore control.

I guess we're talking past each other. You're of the impression that I'm going to try to circumvent them refusing to serve me content while I'm blocking ads. I'm not. I have no reason to. They have every right to refuse to let me view their content for any reason they choose, and I have every right to not run arbitrary scripts they serve me on my computer.

There is no war, because I'm not going to fight. I'm going to viciously restrict what runs on my system to protect my own security and privacy. If that makes some services or sites become unavailable to me, so be it.

Which will be funny when they start serving malware directly from their servers.

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