Exactly. I've got a right to block ads if I can figure out how to achieve that technologically. But they've got a right to not give me content if they can figure out, technologically, that I'm blocking their ads.
This all seems very fair to me.
Naturally this may make the process a bit cumbersome and websites that does not behave like this will gain a bit competitive advantage.
If the server can run a script to analyze what plugins you're running, what else can it take? Exfiltration of arbitrary data is not something that is OK.
You can't force a server to serve, nor should you force a client to give more information than is necessary to serve the request. Anything else is no longer technology, it's adversarial and now we're in a Prisoner's Dilemma.
I hate billboards. I feel like they’re too intrusive and wouldn’t mind seeing a ban.
Especially the ones that are back lit. Can’t believe advertisers are given the right to attempt to distract drivers the most.
Broadcast static-media advertisements generally aren't engaged in a cat-and-mouse game where they increase surveillance to combat fraud.
The point is that web site owners should be able to easily implement ad/pay walls, and let the market decide whether users are OK with that. The current situation is that ad blocking is a luxury, afforded by people like us with a decent Internet connection for the constant updates, and understanding of technology, to enable ad blocking in the first place.
They should be easily able to make the attempt, they should not easily be effective because to do so is to allow authoritarianism.
I paid for my device, they should have no control over it, yet they do. The threat of having that ability is too high.
Let's not forget that people are (1) choosing to visit the site, and (2) choosing to run the server's code locally. This isn't authoritarianism.
If you want to watch YouTube, or Netflix, or whatever, you have to seek it out, and run their code. And of course, you should mutually agree to terms to see be distributed their content.
no they don't. Even with this theoretical header, they wouldn't have control unless it was an OS-level setting (even then, it'd be trivial to spoof).
they have data you desire, you send a request to connect, they use info in that request to give you a response. malicious services aside, the worst they can do is send nothing, or only undesirable data (a page full of nothing but ads, that you'd block. resulting in nothing). It doesn't control your ability to tab out, close the tab, switch the browser, nor change your OS.
And this isn't just about the browser, but about things such as certain cables being unable to display movies, etc.
>certain cables being unable to display movies, etc.
HDCP was indeed a mistake. A very flimsy one at that. There's so many ways to display content that trying to block it on some specific kind of cable protocol is silly. It just makes people think the device is broken.
Isn't paywalls (not ad walls) just bog standard subscription membership?
If so, the technical implementation part of that has been pretty well solved many times over.
Ad-walls though are a different kettle of fish.
I wish sites would stop with the nag pop-ups and all that junk.
Ideally, sites’ link generators would have a means of labeling their links as “ad-required” and our browsers could just be programmed to not render them. Link aggregation sites like Hackernews could just not show those sites to users that don’t want them. If a site requires a GDPR tracking pop-up, I just don’t want it to show up in my duck-duck-go searches.
It is annoying that it is a battle. We have two parties that just don’t want to do business with each other. I get that many sites are ad-supported and I wish they could be hidden so that I could more easily find the other ones.
Not sure I understand that particular hill for dying on. If they aren't legally required to give you a choice, they're just going to be tracking you unconditionally.
GDPR is great, sites should be required to ask to track. But if they start asking, most sites, I’d rather just leave.
They'd rather filter sites that track in the first place.
Sure today, in a world that developed without that, that would remove most of the internet, but so what?
That just means their principle vs practical set point lands on a different part of the scale than you, but so does everyone's vs everyone else's.
It's a great idea to imagine, if that were somehow possible and the norm, would it still be most of the internet? Would good old unprincipled pragmatic market forces not result in most sites somehow finding a way to be in front of everyone's eyes?
Maybe for most sites, but not for most site visits, since people mostly visit just a few large sites that are too big to ignore the law.
Just go to the Filter Lists tab in your uBlock Origin settings and check these groups:
* AdGuard - Annoyances
* uBlock filters - Annoyances
If you still see nags anywhere after enabling these lists, please click on the extension button and use the report option (the speech bubble icon).
If they can figure out how to do that technologically, it's their right (IMO). However, I believe they're fooling themselves if they think they can maintain this: the hackers are constantly figuring out how to defeat such protection measures, and it only takes one hacker to figure out how to bypass their ad-blocker-blocker and add it to the ad-blocker apps (or filter lists) for it to work for everyone who uses that ad-blocker.