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Comment by Feniks | Hacker News Reader

I block ads, analytics and 3rd party fonts. Almost every site works just fine.

I do the same (uBlock Origin) and almost every site works, but there are a still a few I need to whitelist because they do weird stuff, like triggering their own scripts to run from analytics callbacks. Airline and banking websites are a couple of common categories of sites I usually need to whitelist to work properly - that's not really an issue though as they don't usually have 3rd party ads.

I block everything too and sites break so rarely that it takes me a while to link the breakage with blocking of trackers.

Yeah I have a clean backup browser for the few sites that don't work and I still want to use. I'm always reminded how CRAP the internet has become.

I do the same thing too, blocking all 3rd-party junk using uBlock Origin. As one specific example, I've had to let motortrendondemand.com fire off Omniture, because apparently their video player (through Kaltura) depends on it.

It's just lazy design, or possibly malicious, I'm not sure.

As I'm sure you're aware, many content creators that you are reading the work of fund their efforts via ads. I think this is a happy medium to attempt to improve performance of these pages without denying them compensation.

I used to feel bad about it, but it has become evident that any content creator still primarily funding themselves through third-party ads in 2017 is the digital equivalent of a streetwalker.

It's a low-class business model that is rife with disease. There's no barrier to entry-- literally anybody can do it, there is no filtering of who they'll do business with, and it's a race to the bottom to earn pennies at the expense of their integrity. Despite having actual content of value, they share a business model with a blog farm full of Markov-generated malware-laden shitposts.

Given the now-well-known threats to health and safety that third-party ads present, one does not have the right to get upset when clients insist on using protection when dealing with them.

Set up a Patreon for donations, set up affiliate links or offer subscriber perks if adblocking is cutting into revenue. Either option is far more lucrative, ethical and honest than whoring oneself out for the benefit of some shady ad firm that leaves the user with a nasty case of Bonzi.

If the ads didn't feel abusive then I might feel bad. But they do.

Fine. Except figuring out a business model is the content creator responsibility not the user's. Business models that involve hostile 3rd party adds/tracking are bad and if your users are trying to evade those, you need to figure out something better. Blaming the user reaction won't help.

> As I'm sure you're aware, many content creators that you are reading the work of fund their efforts via ads.

Not our problem if they bet on a brittle business model and don't want to adapt. Even more: the web ecosystem was fun and a with a lot more freedom before the invasion of ad based companies. I don't see any problem with some culling of the politically correct parasites.

> As I'm sure you're aware, many content creators that you are reading the work of fund their efforts via ads.

I cannot make myself care about that, at all.

I am not the person responsible for finding a viable revenue model, that is the responsibility of the content creator. I refuse all ads and tracking, because I value my own attention span, my time, my bandwidth and my privacy.

I am not obligated to watch ads online, just as I am not obligated to stay on a TV channel and stay in the room while ads are running, just as I am not obligated to pay any attention at all to ad billboards.

As an aside, I support several high-quality content creators through Patreon, and several open source projects through donations.

Their failed business model is not our problem.

I think you are aware that ads are the emerged part of the iceberg, the big part is the profiling, tracking and data collection going hand in hand with ads.

If ads were unintrusive and not gobbling privacy, then I would not block them as I would not mind them.

Excuse me but I have to go now, local girls want to give me a free ipad that I won by clicking the fart button after subscribing to the newsletter that was blocking the content of the page I finally chose not to read because fk it.

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