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DeathArrow

I benefit from ad free internet since the first ad blocker extension was made.

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Same. It's a bit weird to write a whole article on ads on the Internet and not mention ad blocking once.

I don't want to see ads, any ad, ever, and so far I'm succeeding, but I wonder how long this is going to last.

I'm amazed that ad-blockers are not more popular.

They do require a certain degree of technical understanding, but the extension system on most browsers is fairly mainstream so I don't think it's for this reason alone.

Can it be as simple as the idea that almost all of media is universally disincentivized from talking about them? Of course there is a lot of content on ad-blockers out there, but the pressure may still be high enough to suppress cut-through to the mainstream. If that's the case it would be a nice example as to the extent of media influence more broadly.

This article is a case in point, where you would have thought that ad-blockers may have been relevant. And as a side point, perhaps also a good example of where you don't even have to be rich if you are knowledgable. Technical literacy is in itself a kind of digital affluence.

If ad blockers were more popular the internet would be a much different place. Those who use ad blockers are subsidized by those who don't.

Modern internet is not in business of producing content and using ads as means of paying for said content production and delivery. Modern internet is in business of selling ads and is using content producers as means of keeping users in front of screens while ads are being shoved into their faces.

So, yeah, internet would be different, but to me it isn't obvious how it would be any worse or less in value.

That's an interesting point of view.

I think the internet would be worse. No matter how you put it, the ads are funding content. If ads weren't viable, we wouldn't have a different kind of content. We'd simply have less content.

If there's a content business that can exist in this ad-free internet, it would already exist in the current ad-ful internet.

I don't know what kind of internet anti-ads people envision, but I'm afraid the whole thing is very damn fragile and rocking the boat will more likely break it irreparably than make it better.

The article is effectively an ad[1] for the tech startup scheme:

1. “Give away” access to build a network effect

2. Get a network

3. Act with righteous indignation when some killjoy like the EU comes and says that you cannot just harvest whatever user data you want at will and users don’t opt to pay the proposed ransom money

[1] Presenting their worldview as just a given, something obvious.

>It's a bit weird to write a whole article on ads on the Internet and not mention ad blocking once.

Because they don't want you to know about it. Most common users still don't. Look at where the article is published: a website that uses ads.

Although "cookie", more like terror, banners show the immense list of advertisers if you have a slight misconfiguration in your content blockers. And newspapers won't even load more than a paragraph without an explicit consent cookie, unless you pay for every site, usually monthly. But at least in germany, not automatically recurring: they don't actually want to sell subscriptions.

As long as companies like Google, Meta won't succeed in pushing new web standards that make ads impossible to block.

But even then, the browser can prerender the page use AI to find and remove the ad and do the final render. :)

If you’re on any social media, then you see ads. If you use any search engine, then you see ads. There are ads even on Wikipedia. You can see them even if you use all of the adblockers.

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