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Comment by wanderer_ | Hacker News Reader

Here's the ever-present warning when employing any ad-blocking: make sure you whitelist friendly blog sites, they need your ad money to operate! (Not that there is anything wrong with this project, just keep that in mind).

I do understand that this is something completely different, and it solves a real problem. Great job! Welcome back to the game, xvello, 2005 was a long time ago...

I might pop into the repo later and see about contributing.

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> Here's the ever-present warning when employing any ad-blocking: make sure you whitelist friendly blog sites, they need your ad money to operate! (Not that there is anything wrong with this project, just keep that in mind).

I'd prefer blogs do what Serious Eats did for a while; if you blocked ads, they showed a message in its place saying "we get it completely, but consider donating". I'll happily donate or hop on a Patreon for a site I keep coming back to if you make it possible.

I block ads as a security measure, regardless of how much I appreciate/trust a site.

All of this is valid. While writing that comment, I had in mind a particular blog, one that responsibly displays its ads. I do get wanting to get rid of ads on sites I don't care about.

There's no blog I know of that is worth any ads they may want to display. This broad acceptance of using ads to generate revenue has warped the internet. It encouraged tracking, and finding out as much personal details, use of AI, etc. Best thing we can do is block all ads.

Hopefully you pay for the content you enjoy then?

many cases, I can't because it relies solely on the ad model. But paying for it really isn't the point, the whole point is advertising isn't semi benign like it was in broadcast TV / Newspapers of old. There is now massive incentive to essentially to target individuals specifically by gathering as much data about them and who they know and are influenced by and trying to predict / influence behavior. We have already seen when used for political advertising, it's been done for social engineering and influence the outcomes of elections in a way that is quite insidious. Weirdly, other than a minority, not many are worried about it because it is invisible. Mandate something to people, and there's a lot of yelling and screaming, but if you can do this without people feeling like they have been targeted, no problem!

I have some of these same feelings. But for me, those feelings are complimented by the conviction that without these kinds of monetization, the Internet would be largely useless. Of course, some might argue that this version of the Internet would be better for us as a society.

Regardless, in our capitalistic society, we couldn't enjoy things on the Internet without money flowing through it like this.

That friendly blog site includes trackers. They won’t get my money until they respect my privacy.

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