This is the tradeoff for getting free stuff on the internet. But surely there has to be a balance between watching adverts to pay for free services, and handing over all privacy in return.
Spend $1000's a year on sites that are still highly invasive. Using blockers and disabling js often breaks them. Does this business really need to send my data off to a dozen 3rd parties to upsell me on a drillbit set?
Why do it? Because they can?
Without Javascript it would not be as easy.
With the help of the "modern browser" and its defaults, its like shooting fish in a barrel.
The original HTTP/1.1 RFC has some reasonably low limits on simultaneous connections; todays ad-sponsored browsers ignore them.
Turn off Javascript and the web marketing Rube Goldberg machines begin to fail.
Most web pages try to coax users into turning on Javascript, or even installing a different browser.
At this point, a web developer will jump in and try to convince us the web cannot work without Javascript.
This is false. There was e-commerce on the web before Java1 or Javascript.
1. Java began life as a language intended to be embedded in devices. It was repurposed to be a scripting language for the web. That was a failure.
Javascript is a "success" but in the ways that it is abused, it can be every bit as annoying as a 1990s Java applet.
If you didn’t pay, you are the product.
If you did pay, you may or may not be the product. But that’s not covered by the trope.
Why?
I’ve been a webdev for 20-something years, and it sure didn’t used to be the tradeoff.
When you have systemic rent-seeking, any sort of gift-economy is priced out.
Paid for by Brian Acton's conscience.
Another resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software) happens to come from a completely-free-of-3rd-party-ads-yet-free platform…
It's good to be wary, but the idea that nothing is ever free is actually wrong and helps make people think they have to give up something or pay etc. even when they don't need to. We need to get beyond "How can it be free‽ There must be some catch!" and to the reality of just "Is this really free without a catch?"
Because we should be wary but not give into the idea that free is actually too good to be true. Things can actually be free, and people can actually be pro-social in their motivations.