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Comment by thefurdrake | Hacker News Reader

> I was with you until this piece. Not everyone is well educate enough on blocking ads.

The statement was directed to the audience, IE HN. I have confidence that everyone on HN is capable of installing those browser plugins and comprehending the complex clusterfuck that is uMatrix.

I don't have a solution for the less-technical folks right now. The best I can do is encourage people who ARE capable of responding reasonably to that message to help the people who don't. uBlock Origin is already pretty friendly, but uMatrix is a nightmare.

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> I don't have a solution for the less-technical folks right now. The best I can do is encourage people

They suggested regulation as is done in Europe. Perhaps that's worthy of consideration since hope and power users aren't stopping this problem

I think regulation is definitely part of the solution.

The problem we're facing is that adtech is a multibillion dollar industry with the will and means to actively research and develop new and exciting ways to bypass legislation.

I can't control the legislation beyond who I vote for, and none of the voting options I'm given seem aware of how the internet works, so I am left with the avenue of "Angrily tell people on the internet to stop doing that" and try to encourage attrition as much as I can.

Legislation can be written so that there is no bypass. Google's billions would not save them if tomorrow they embarked on building a private nuclear SLBM fleet.

>Legislation can be written so that there is no bypass.

It cant for existing profitable business models. You couldnt ban the google owned nuclear SLBM fleet if it already existed and represent the most profitable sector of the economy. Inertia exists and the more profitable the topics the harder it is to break from a central position. It would be economic suicide on a national level.

You would get some paper tiger checks and balances entrenching googles nuclear fleet monopoly.

>You couldnt ban the google owned nuclear SLBM fleet if it already existed and represent the most profitable sector of the economy.

Of course we can ban that. :laughs in EU:

There just isn't the political will behind it like it is on things like ICE cars or nuclear energy, because unlike the latter things, the politicians and voters don't understands it well enough to be outraged about it.

We can ban that on paper and pretend that the problem went away. We cant actually nuke large parts of the GDP.

edit: Saw your nuclear energy edit too late. Thats a great example for protectionism / having a frame for subsidies. We still require energy, that section of the GDP didnt just evaporate.

Car legislation is likewise just a driver for higher consumption.

You would need something equally profitable to do for the sub fleet supply chain to ban it.

> I don't have a solution for the less-technical folks right now

When I set a computer for any of my friends and family, I drop uBlock Origin on it and show them briefly how it works, usually using cnn or similar sites an example. It solves 99% of any computer problems they run into.

I just have them use Brave.

This is no solution.

There was a time when Chrome started to be bundled with every freeware out there. Most of the people where I did IT-Support ended up using chrome at some point. They didn't even realize when or how they changed a browser. Some didn't even know what a browser IS. They just open "the internet".

I had installed Firefox with proper protection before that.

Why isn't it a solution? It works pretty well for them, I don't get any calls or messages asking why something isn't doing what it's supposed to.

Good for you.

I ended up with a bunch of users who used chrome without adblocker, downloading crap.

In the end, I diverted the chrome shortcut to Firefox, which is good enough with ublock. Wouldn't install them, Brave. Don't want them to come back to me asking about that crypto custerfu.

I ignore the crypto thing exists as should every decent human being.

Ignoring it, won't make it go away.

Especially the way it started. It's till out there. The internet never forgets.

>The statement was directed to the audience, IE HN.

Unclear from your comment who the target audience was, but to me it would be equally inflammatory regardless. The non-tech-savvy users are a way bigger and more vulnerable target than just the HN userbase which is a microscopic minority on global level.

> Unclear from your comment who the target was, but to me it was equally inflammatory, regardless

Eh, agreed. Kinda detracts from the point. I've gotten pretty vehement about the topic over the last few years I guess.

Equally inflammatory to tell people who should know better that they'll keep getting what they deserve? How is it unclear who the audience is on HN?

Encouraging those who can to do is also a component of grassroots change. I don't think it took much charity to interpret their comment as being directed toward HN, and only a little more to imagine how pushing tech people to use/develop/polish ad blocking tools can result in the spread of such things.

Seems like you're working hard to be upset.

uBlock can become decently complicated too if you enable "I'm an advanced user" in the settings menu

I think it can be made to do the same things as uMatrix with advanced mode (I use medium mode on uBlock) - or am I wrong on this? Ive never used uMatrix before

Honestly, I admit I've never tried to make uBlock behave like uMatrix. A quick look at the UI suggests maybe (?). uMatrix allows me to granularly select types of resources like scripts, iframes, and images from every domain/subdomain on a page, though, and that UI didn't look like it was set up for that to be possible easily.

I think I actually started out with uMatrix first so I've mostly relied on it to do most of the heavy lifting.

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