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Comment by Timshel | Hacker News Reader

> Advertising is the dominant business model on the web and it's not going away.

Not sure it's as strong as you suggest. I read the recent fight between Youtube vs Addblocker more as a weakness and a bit of hope that it might make YT less user friendly and could help other platforms.

> They deserve privacy too.

I agree so helps them install blocker and stuff like Consent-O-Matic instead of sneaking in features to help advertiser on their browser ... Using PPA does not bring any privacy unless I missed a meta anouncement that they disable tracking when ppa is activated ?

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Blocking ads only works because just a small percentage of users block ads. It's a free-rider situation and someone has to pay. If everyone blocks ads then sites will either counter ad blockers or if that's not possible, implement a pay wall.

I'm all for pay walls. Privacy respecting service would finally have a chance.

The problem for me with paywalls is that you have to give a lot of information in order to pay. So you still don't have privacy.

Maybe services should take Monero. I know some that do.

This protects your wallet's privacy, but as a user who needs to log in to their systems you can still be tracked, even if they can't tell how much money you had on some specific wallet.

For paywalls, too?

Gnu Taler

No, people who block ads aren't free-riders. If blocking would stomp out the mass of low quality bot sites and some of currently "free" services, I wouldn't complain too loudly.

This is the usual PR response from the ad industry.

The web existed before ads and was funded by people that cared and were interested in something.

Now it's funded by ad companies and those don't care about anything but sales and have no interest in anything but money.

The useful internet made and used by people with interests and investment on a personal level is mostly dead. Replaced with shovelware and filler content to place intrusive ads around. Content has become the payload for ads, the more the better. Quality doesn't matter anymore, just deliver payloads with ads.

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