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Comment by jalfresi | Hacker News Reader

Article blocks those using an ad-blocker

Here's the thing about AdBlockers...

Ironic, considering I'm trying to read an article about privacy, and the entire reason I use an adblocker is to try and protect that privacy.

If you're using Safari, you can hit the Reader button and get the full article without crappy styling or ads! (It worked for me on Safari for OS X with AdBlock for Safari installed.)

Block their ad-block blocker with anti-adblock-killer https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/

Built into uBlock Origin with a checkbox to enable it in the settings.

Because you're entitled to their content.

They're not entitled to execute code on my computer that I don't want executed. If they want to prevent access to their content, that's fine, but they aren't doing that, they're making an absurd attempt to keep their content online while forcing people to disable their adblockers, which protect people from excessive resource downloading, slow websites, behavior tracking, and malware. The correct response is to block the script that tries to force that, not disable the adblocker. Or, better yet, block the entire site.

No, the correct response is to not go to the site in the first place. All I saw from your response is that you should be entitled to go read their content, despite the fact that they don't wish for people with ad blockers to go to their site. So you are saying you are entitled to read their content, rather than simply not going to it in the first place.

Yes, obviously people are entitled to read content served to them. That's how the web works.

Cool. Let's put ad-blockers in the UserAgent string so that both parties are approaching the transaction honestly, and see how that pans out.

You can't invent some new standard for "honest behavior" and then accuse others of dishonesty for not following it. There's nothing dishonest about not informing sites about what addons one is running. We're being just a straightforward as sites are with their information about exactly what PII is captured, by whom and exactly who gets a copy of it and for what purposes it is used. If new standards of reporting are to be expected, then sites - most of which can't even tell who is serving the ads they have on their site - would be screwed.

I actually only use adblockers on my tablet, since I have misgivings about the effect of the end of web advertising on the availability of sites to poor people (since ads effectively act as a redistribution mechanism), but I don't blame anyone for not being willing to subject themselves to that crap.

This isn't a new standard. "Don't take shit you haven't paid for" has been a standard for quite some time.

Seriously, at the end of the day, why do you feel entitled to their content, instead of simply not going to their site?

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The new standard was Doctor_Fegg's idea that people should announce in their user-agent that they are using an adblocker. In any case, nothing is being "taken". The entitlement comes from where it has always come from - one makes a request, they reply with whatever they want to serve. Payment is only a moral obligation when we have agreed to do so, otherwise we'd have to pay for every musician playing on the street, regardless of whether we enjoy their content or not. People trying to push moral obligations to prop up their flawed business models don't get my sympathy.

But this isn't that. This is people getting content served to them after it was initially denied.

You still haven't explained why you're entitled to their content for free. How do you expect them to actually pay their bills? And if you don't care about that, then why are you reading their content?

The content is being served and then they're trying to examine your browser and tell your browser to hide it if it meets certain conditions. The content is already in the browser.

Legally? Yes.

No, not really.

Yeah, legally you're totally allowed to download stuff from websites.

It's not illegal to block ads and continue consuming content.

That actually didn't work. I forced that list to update just in case, but it doesn't make a difference. I also wasn't getting the usual reader mode prompt in the address bar.

Safari Develop -> Disable Javascript works fine, though.

It generally does work, but sometimes new blocker scripts will still get through before an update makes it into the pipeline, and it's possible that some are even randomizing or otherwise altering their scripts to avoid detection.

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