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Comment by nherment | Hacker News Reader

Not sure what to think of it:

An "ethical" ad blocking service launched Thursday that allows users to pay their favorite publishers not to show them ads. [...] With Optimal.com, users will pay a flat monthly fee (Leathern told Business Insider the exact amount hasn't been released, but it's likely to be a high single-digit number) to experience an ad free web.

Source: http://uk.businessinsider.com/optimal-launches-subscription-...

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>"An "ethical" ad blocking service "

All ad-blocking is ethical. It's the advertisers job to make me aware of products in a way that doesn't anger me, and they're doing a really shitty job.

When you adblock instead of not using adblock websites lose money.

They have lost nothing, the money wasn't theirs to begin with.

They don't have the right to decide how users computers should behave when rendering pages.

So they are paying for browser.. protection... in advance? Like a Racket?

Is that even legal?

So we have a separate subscription service at app.optimal.com where you can pay $5.99 a month and we will distribute 70% of that to publishers, entirely transparently. You can also "tip" sites an extra 5c or 25c if you like. There is no connection to our blocker or anyone else's... It's the honor system. We trust some people will do that and it will be enough to create new value for the broken ads ecosystem. We welcome your comments and ideas on this but fundamentally I believe that there should be an option in all media to avoid ads AND pay journalists (my brother is one), a fair rate. This can't be done by any one website on its own.

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