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Comment by stanmancan | Hacker News Reader

I never said anything about spying.

Magazines and newspapers were able to by funded by native ads because you couldn't auto-remove ads from their printed media and nobody could clone their content and give it away for free.

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Newspapers sell information. Information is now trivial to copy and send across the globe, when 50 years ago it wasnt. And youre wrong about "nobody could clone their content", because they absolutely could, different editions were pressed throughout the day (morning, lunch, evening newspapers) at the peak of print media. The barrier to entry used to be a printing press, now its just an internet connection, print media has a hard time accepting that

You can't remove ads that are part of a site's native HTML either - well, not easily, not without an AI determining what is an ad based on the content itself. The few ads I see despite uBlock are like that - something the website author themself included, and not by pulling it in from a different domain.

And those ads don't spy. They tend to be a jpg that functions as a link. That's why I mentioned spying.

If ads were more respectful I wouldn’t have to remove them. Alas they can’t help themselves and so I do.

When ads were far less invasive, I had a lot more tolerance.

Now they want my data, they want to play audio, video, hijack the content, page etc.

Advertising scum can not be trusted to forever take more and more and more.

I also have ad-blockers for the same reason. However, if you don't support the people or companies producing the media you consume then don't be surprised when they go out of business.

> don't be surprised when they go out of business.

I’m ok with this. I support the media I truely want to see, and that media offers alternatives that are not ads.

For instance, I pay for YouTube premium. That said, many will not pay.

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