Gmail is showing ads in the middle of the inbox

I concur.

Can't remember when I've last seen an add on mobile and I use exactly that.

Firefox with uBlock Origin on a cheap ass Motorola phone with not very much memory.

Second this. If you’re on iOS you can also do NextDNS + 1Blocker to block ads both at the browser and network level.

Most "content" is not worth the bytes they are encoded in, so usually I don't.

Since I don't "consume" any "content", job done!

If you don't agree with people consuming public content in whatever way they like, including stripping unwanted parts, you are free not to make your content public.

> Ads is something you can rely on

Not necessarily, especially in the long term.

> If you think everyone is out there making big bucks just because they opened a website and put some ads on it, you're wrong.

I never said or implied that.

> Not only does it take time to build reputation and a following, people just don't out of the blue come and throw money at you.

Not my problem.

> what I think a lot of people are really saying is that, "All I want is just free content. Give me a raw white background with a slab of text centered in the middle of it and I will be on my way."

No idea what that has to do with anything.

> That is not how this world works, and trying to argue about it just makes you look selfish.

I don't care if I look selfish.

> That is not how this world works, and trying to argue about it just makes you look selfish.

Ad blocking is a very common activity that is legal in every jurisdiction that I'm aware of. Since ad blocking is legal and many users consider ads an unnecessary distraction, a time waster, or a privacy-invading scourge, users have strong incentives to block ads.

No publisher is obligated to release content with ads, and nobody is entitled to have a sustainable business that runs on ads. The notion that ads should be "something you can rely on" for profit is not consistent with the reality of business, because there is no business model that inherently deserves to be successful. If a publisher wants to ensure that they receive payment for any content they create that is consumed, they can require that payment upfront with a paywall.

Trying to characterize ad blocking as immoral because it benefits users over publishers isn't a winning strategy for publishers. Publishers need to create an actual incentive for users to fund their content, directly or indirectly, if they want to get paid. Since advertising is a monetization model that degrades the quality of the publisher's product and users can easily bypass ads with an ad blocker, more and more publishers are finding out over time that advertising isn't "something you can rely on" after all.

> "All I want is just free content...."

Nope. All I want is a viable way to support writers, musicians, videographers and other creatives that doesn't involve some climate killing cryptocurrency and doesn't require a credit card transaction per view. Then I'll be on my way.

Selfish is profiting from mass psychological manipulation. Advertising makes the world a worse place.

> People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

> You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

> Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

> You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

Leave a one-time tip occasionally.

It makes a difference.

Brave is trying to do that, but yeah coverage is an issue. Blocking as is a start.

It's all about network effects, but how do you bootstrap an aggregator?

I'm just waiting for substack to realize that $60/year for every writer is too much, and make a curated bundle of writing, reinventing the newsletter/magazine.

> everyone is fine trading their time watching ads for watching everything for free.

Given that many people pay actual money in exchange for not seeing ads, I think this blanket statement is clearly false.

The problem is that consumers will pay twice: once with their time, and then again through the product which is now more expensive because of ads.

(And then again with their personal private information, and by buying not the thing they really needed but something that had more advertising budget behind it, ...)

To be clear, Google does not provide an ad free email service to consumers, and I wouldn't expect the general public to create a Google Workspace account for a personal ad-free mail experience.

In my experience, ad-free paid email from Google aggressively pipes the content of your email to adsense/doubleclick.

They vehemently deny this, but I think the issue is that you can’t run with cookies disabled and also use the gmail web UI, so every time you click a link they track it.

Having said that, they seem to do a good job tracking my gmail (and nothing else) even if I use the IMAP gateway.

I am an extremely happy fastmail user, btw.

I already do, but in this case, I’m the content creator, not the email user.

Those same ad networks that serve up ads that "pay content creators" also serve up ads that contain malicious JavaScript and malware, or links to sites that perform all manner of malicious activity (click-jacking, XSS attacks... etc.).

Running an ad blocker is required for safe use of the web these days. The "consequences" of content not getting produced are of far less impact than the consequences of failing to block malicious code contained in ads. You're argument says "me getting paid is more important than you protecting yourself from identity theft and privacy invasion." I don't accept the trade-off.

Can’t you pay youtube or did they kill that feature?

I’ve noticed the “N trackers blocked this week” thingy on my web browser is trending down rapidly now that I only read news here and on apple news+.

(Though Apple News+ is turning into 100% clickbait, so apparently the economic incentives are nearly as bad there as they are at FB and ad supported sites.)

> Whitelisting creates friction. Maybe if there's a button in the browser to do that for a site / page it would work

With uBlock Origin it's trivial, I do this all the time. You click on the extension toolbar button, then on the huge "On/Off" button and it remembers your setting for that particular site forever. Literally two clicks.

I mean, then I don't see why what I wrote would somehow apply to you? Continue blocking ads everywhere, no need to announce it to the world, just keep on keeping on :)

The OP I was responding to specifically used the phrase “content creator,” which is popularly understood in the English speaking world to refer to artists, writers, musicians, video creators, and other such pursuits who generally have rather slim prospects at making a living without ads. In contrast to software developers and sysadmins, who seem to be quite good at making money regardless. If the argument is that google workers need to put food on the table and that is why giving you targeted ads in your email web client is necessary (or, rather, why blocking those ads is unacceptable), then don’t hide it behind sympathy for the folks who are much more poorly served by the current economic structure.

You are paying with actual money out of your bank account when viewing ads. Only indirectly. The average you anyway. If ads weren't profitable they wouldn't be there.

I think it makes sens for people who get themselves signed up for all kinds of newsletters they don't really want and then can't find anything in their inbox. So really it's just another anti-spam filter and comes with the same downsides.