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Comment by TravisLS | Hacker News Reader

Is it necessary that ad blockers be totally all-or-nothing in their approach? Pop-up blockers didn't kill all ads. They just killed pop-ups. If it's really the privacy violations that are the problem, and not the user experience of seeing a bunch of ads, why not find a middle ground?

Make an ad blocker that just dishonors cookies, clears localStorage, etc for the ad domains, rather than blocking the requests altogether. Publishers won't make as much money since advertisers won't be able to track you. But at least you could give the publishers the ability to make some money from ads served to you.

If this approach gained adoption, you might see a growth in the market for non-tracking ads (analogous to the growth in the market for non-popup ads described in the article).

Why not?

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Adblock Plus has their "acceptable ads" feature[1] so it's already a thing. But there was some controversy around it, which I don't recall well enough to give a fair hearing.

Also, Firefox has a good deal of tracker blocking[2] built in that tries to go after browser signature recognition. I think the problem with that is it can break some sites, though I have it on and don't see a lot of problems.

Beyond that, many ad blockers let you customize the lists, and there are tracker blocking lists. But I think they all default to standard ad blocking, so the hindrance is configuration.

[1]: https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads [2]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking

> Adblock Plus has their "acceptable ads" feature[1] so it's already a thing. But there was some controversy around it, which I don't recall well enough to give a fair hearing.

You can pay the makers of Adblock Plus to have your ads declared "acceptable". However, I do not want somebody else deciding for me which ads are "acceptable".

> Is it necessary that ad blockers be totally all-or-nothing in their approach?

Yes, it is. Publishers and advertisers have overstepped time and time again. They must be reminded of their place, and nothing short of grabbing them by the scruff of the neck and rubbing their noses in the mess they made will suffice.

> But at least you could give the publishers the ability to make some money from ads served to you.

I could, but why should I? The publishers had a chance to be reasonable, and they just kept pushing. I'm done being reasonable. The publishers should be glad they aren't facing the Internet Death Penalty[1].

1: http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Internet-Death-Penalty.html

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