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Comment by mangeletti | Hacker News Reader

I created https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/173 last weekend in response to my first experience of CoinTent.

At the time, I was mostly offended by the insultingly large (72KB after GZIP) JavaScript file that the system caused me download to facilitate the wrecking of my experience, and felt a little guilty for recommending them for inclusion in uBlock.

Now that I realize their entire business strategy is based on creating a problem – reaction – solution scenario for their own benefit, at the expense of publishers and readers.

The concept is basically, "We don't like ads and you shouldn't either, so here's an ad to tell you that while ruining your web experience. Now give us money."

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Isn't any non-free, non-subscription service going to have to either put that barrier up or show ads? I may be misunderstanding your complaint, but it sounds really bizarre to me, akin to:

"Jesus every time I want to go watch a movie at the theatre there's this obnoxious guy blocking my way asking to see my 'ticket'. I don't have to deal with this bullshit when I watch TV at home, I just turn it on and start watching content"/

I think you need to go read the whole article. These guys are offering an ad blocker that ruins the ad revenue of websites and then offers the solution by also being a paywall.

I assume from your condescension that you read the article (or at least think you did), so the problem is presumably with your reading comprehension.

As I said, some sort of wall is inherent to the solution (seamless micro transactions would have people, perhaps unfairly, claiming that they didn't realize they were spending money). The whole premise behind this project is to replace ads for people who don't like ads. It's laughable to claim that the banner informing people of that is an ad. Your complaint about ruining the web experience seems to be that it puts barriers in front of your browsing, and my point was that almost any solution that compensates content creators is going to suffer from this.

I'm sorry I triggered you.

I think that, if the purpose of the popup is to inform me about CoinTent, then can it be anything other than an ad?

If the goal was to solve a problem, then CoinTent would be only the paywall, since ad blockers are already prolific.

> I'm sorry I triggered you.

Lol, you're adorable. I'm starting to believe it's not even reading comprehension issues with you, it's just functional illiteracy.

I totally understand his point. I think you're the one with reading comprehension issues here...

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