No adblocker detected
maurycyz.com
maurycyz.com
As for YouTube, blocking their ads is basically a part-time job at this point. On the desktop it breaks once a month, on Android NewPipe stopped working recently, and soon you won't be even able to install third party clients.
90% of my YouTube use is on my smart TV. There's not really a straightforward way to block ads there. Used to be many years ago that a PiHole or similar would work, but they clued onto that years ago.
There's also this email from YouTube support: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1gnaetv/paying_to_...
It reads:
> While YouTube Premium provides an ad-free experience for most content, promotional ads can sometimes appear for specific partnerships or limited-time offers. These promotions are often targeted based on various factors, including your location, viewing history, and account settings.
It periodically has issues loading videos when Google change something, but the app gets updated every time within a day.
I spend less in nominal terms, let alone inflation terms, for my tv entertainment now than I did 20 year ago, even with Disney, Netflix, bbc, Paramount and YouTube subscriptions.
I do not regularly visit such sites. I do unblock websites that I return to often.
I use uBlock Origin, plus I've configured my Firefox to open YouTube always in a dedicated container, that logs me out of any Google-related stuff as I never upvote or comment anyway. Browsing YouTube anonymously might have helped.
I'm surprised they haven't gone for the "refuse to serve the video stream for 20 seconds or however long the ad would take" card yet, although it's probably a matter of time.
If that happens to you, this thread [1] is sometimes updated with manual workarounds that sometimes work:
www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)
www.youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.web_enable_ab_rsp_cl, false)
www.youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.ab_pl_man, false)
||googlevideo.com/videoplayback$xhr,3p,method=get,domain=www.youtube.com
www.youtube.com/watch##+js(set, ytInitialData, undefined)
I would gladly pay for an independent alternative but I will never pay for Youtube Premium on principle [1]. If these workarounds stop working I'll just use third party clients all the time, I already use SmartTube on TV.
[1] If I give you my money, I want you to respect me as a customer. Google will continue tracking me, abuse my personal information, and almost certainly re-introduce ads at some point in the future in pursuit of infinite growth. It's never going to be enough, the only winning move (with them) is not to play.
Thanks, that explains a lot, why i sometime have trouble with youtube, while having perfectly fine internet connection.
I should sniff traffic to find out why, but my assumption is that it's a mix of CRL bloat and code bloat.
I don't mean this as an attack on you. I find it perplexing that this could be such a difficult thing. If a video isn't worth waiting 10-60 seconds for, is the video even worth watching? Consider a comparison to reading a book or watching a DVD. With the DVD you must stand up, walk to the DVD, remove the plastic wrap, turn on the DVD player place the DVD in the tray, wait for the tray to close, load the DVD, wait for the main menu to load, and finally press play to watch your movie. (potentially after navigating through settings to configure audio / subtitles / etc)
The DVD experience could obvious be _better_ (and if you don't care about picture quality you might be shocked how much more convenient a VHS tape is) but this hardly strikes me as any sort of real problem.
Youtube might actually be doing you an accidental favor here; it is the extreme reduction of friction which degrades your impulse control, and is part of what keeps you on the platform too long. By imposing an small but perceptible cost, they might actually keep from your zoning out and watching and instead intentionally watching only the videos you care the most about.
I won't know that until the video starts playing. I'm not watching a 90 minute movie here and I don't know if the video I'm about to play is the one I want. Spending a minute setting up a 90 minute movie is very different than spending a minute waiting for a video to load that I'm likely going to spend <30 seconds on.
Maybe I'm learning how to use certain software and I'm trying to find a video that demonstrates how to use a specific feature. In that case I might be clicking through 10+ videos to find the niche thing I'm looking for. If I was just vegging out on Youtube this wouldn't bother me nearly as much.
And don't forget that the time penalty doesn't only apply to the initial load, it would pause and fake-buffer every time I jumped around the video.
yeah, I often download things via yt-dlp to watch later and I'm encountering frequent failures that I assume are related to the whack-a-mole yt has been doing for the last two years or so.
NewPipe has been working for me as of late though, and I've not updated it in some time (although my use is infrequent)
I sat on calls with teachers at my previous job and they had no extensions installed. My own sister (a milennial) wasn't aware. Before that, I was at a place where devs could join UX interviews; it was even worse given the generational divide: older folks couldn't even tell when a link was obviously malicious.
We either install good browsers/extensions for our relatives, or let them be easy prey to the current state of affairs.
> ...something is wrong with you.
Regardless, your argument surrounding the insult was well worn 20 years ago. And so was the first response; why would I pay into some nebulous system where I don't know how much is really going to whom?
One of the nicer things about the hellscape that is the modern internet is the low-friction ability to pay creators directly.
...oh, I know why! Because if I pay Google, then Sundar pinky swears not to mercilessly track and monetize everything I do on youtube. \s
> Are ad hominems back in vogue?
GP was simply mirroring the language of its parent post:
> Whenever someone just doesn't seem to care i'm concerned something is wrong with them.
Which IMO is indeed way out of line.
Speaking for myself, no, nothings “wrong” with me. I watch YouTube enough that I consider it a valuable service. So do what you may think is insane: I pay for it. And it gives me no ads.
Mr Krabs voice: money!
No but seriously, if the FBI is telling you to use an ad blocker, use a fucking ad blocker.
My workplace doesn't allow ad blockers for security. Except ads are a MUCH bigger security concern and everyone knows it.
I'm so sick and tired of everyone playing dumb and acting like it's fine. No, it's not fine. Its not okay that Google is serving you a phishing ad that drains your bank account. They should be held liable. Why is everyone acting like their balls have been chopped off?
Do something about it. Minimum is run an aggressive ad blocker. MINIMUM!
> There's no insider trading angle at all
Such a blanket statement would definitely be wrong in the UK for example. Insider trading is defined at Section 52(1) of the Criminal Justice act 1993 as: "(1)An individual who has information as an insider is guilty of insider dealing if, in the circumstances mentioned in subsection (3), he deals in securities that are price-affected securities in relation to the information."
Whether you trigger the offence depends on a number of factors such as whether the information is "inside" information and whether you were an "insider" (these terms are defined in subsequent sections of the Act). As an example, if you were an employee of a listed company (not such an unlikely scenario given the capital requirements to pull this off) that was about to engage in the proposed scheme (publishing pro-adblock adverts) and it wasn't yet publicly known (which would be necessary if you want the scheme to be fully effective), and you shorted Google shares, you could easily fall foul of insider trading.
I'm not particularly familiar with the US legal system so I can't claim you're wrong there.
> As an example, if you were an employee of a listed company (not such an unlikely scenario given the capital requirements to pull this off) that was about to engage in the proposed scheme (publishing pro-adblock adverts) and it wasn't yet publicly known (which would be necessary if you want the scheme to be fully effective), and you shorted Google shares, you could easily fall foul of insider trading.
Yeah, that isn't the scenario described earlier at all. Here's what was proposed:
> I wonder if you could spend a few million on promoting adblockers to justify a short position on Google or Meta.
In this sentence, the entity performing the short and performing the advertising are one and the same.
You're reading "you" to mean the reader (highly implausible), I'm reading it as the generic/impersonal "you" (as in "one could spend...").
So sure, there are a tiny percentage of people who might consider doing this themselves and they don't need to worry about insider trading (although we're still pretty close to market manipulation where the sole purpose of the adverts is to crash the share price and profit from that). A much larger percentage of people who might consider such a thing would need to at least examine whether they might trigger insider trading laws.
Blanket statements don't work here.
Pump and dumps are fraud because you lie about the target stock in order to achieve the pump. The lying is a crucial element to make it fraudulent.
US law does not generally prohibit insiders from trading. It prohibits doing so only in breach of some obligation to keep that information private[2] ("in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence").
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45178318
[2]: https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...
That's not correct. I started this particular sub-thread, and in my original comment I specifically said that the answer is jurisdiction dependent. Your reply may have been US-centric but the overall topic was not.
i guess its also a bummer they are financially supporting facebook/youtube, but maybe the end result would be break even if they get enough people to utilize adblocking. thats pretty crazy compound interest over time for even just like 3 people
How people put up with ads is a complete mystery.
Picked up a nice cleaner and hiking boots that my ad blockers were denying me last month.
Life changing.
I didn’t need them. But it’s like walking on a cloud and the fit is perfect. Mostly chance, but that ad started the push.
Interesting choice of phrase
Nice Reddit if that lifestyle appeals, but not for me.
That focusing is the key to the benefit of letting them through the keyhole irregularly.
https://3dvf.com/le-realisateur-philippe-vidal-dumas-nous-qu...
Never mind the dozens of pop-up ads and banners on the site. Random words in the article turn into ads that popup while you're scrolling. And it's easy to accidentally click one because there's more pixels covered by ads than not.
I've been telling her to get an adblocker for years because she, like you, feels like she doesn't need one. But that article last night made her rethink her stance on ads.
For me, I don't mind advertisements. I scroll Instagram a few times a week and there are ads there. I get more ads than actual posts. They're easy enough to ignore. And honestly, sometimes they're interesting.
It's when the ads disrupt my browsing session that pisses me off. If sites didn't have shitty ads that cover your screen and just get in the way, I wouldn't have an adblocker.
I also use adblocker to get rid of shitty non-ad pop-ups, like "you have to install our shitty mobile app to use this site!" Yeah, fuck that. Ublock origin zaps it away.
Ads in public places, bus stops, etc. are kinda hard to avoid unfortunately.
Usually, one of the soft buttons on the left or right edge of the screen is a secret mute button. Occasionally, none of them are, and rarely does anyone else seem to even try to mute their pump.
This usually doesn't stop them from working, because people don't break the voice coil at the center.
You get arrested. That’s what happens.
Kiosk makers have already thought of all of these possibilities. There isn’t a nicely exposed speaker. It’s behind a metal plate with tiny holes in it.
For petty vandalism? That seems like an expensive overreaction.
Perhaps it depends on your demography.
The police won't bother to track down who graffitied your fence, but money-making companies are a different matter.
And it definitely depends on demography. I assume they're still using it, but maybe they just plug everyone's face into Palantir now.
It would not surprise me to hear that someone had committed a crime of that scale while being watched by an SPD officer and still gotten away with it.
> Usually, one of the soft buttons on the left or right edge of the screen is a secret mute button
I found out that's the help button and sometimes a clerk will come out and ask what I need help with and I tell that it stops the annoying noise coming from the pump.
All ads are designed to psychologically manipulate you into acting against your best interest.
By making the bicycle however you get about, you cut down on seeing ads.
(Besides the idea of me having to adjust my route to -for now- not see ads being somewhat offensive to me too.)
Ditto
I dont see any ads online.
I dont have a TV either, I stopped watching that ad infested garbage in 2005.
too old to walk to the bus stop, too much of an introvert to hang out near pulblic places with other people
I went once to a dentist with a TV above my head (sound off); I refused to sit in the chair until it was turned off. The assistant sighed and said "everybody asks the same thing, I wonder why we installed this".
These are very different - and largely interesting to me in their colorfulness and often whimsy. (The cities around here are otherwise NOT visually interesting).
This is something that web sites have always had at their disposal: use static locally-hosted images as ads and respect my screen real-estate, don't try to track me with 20-200 trackers, and I WILL allow them (and do). I will even allow some animation if it respects my bandwidth.
But no, very few web sites feel satisfied with this so multiple ad blockers they get. A few sites do small static image ads. I don't block these and even frequently follow their links.
Like if you’re at a friend’s house and they’re listening to pandora with ads, or watching Hulu with ads?
At these moments that feeling that for most people getting bombarded by ads is normal hits hard. I'm always wondering when the ride will end and uBlock Origin can't protect us any longer.
You're competing with Google. The built-in Drive app does document scanning.
I don't need alternative app stores to download malware and scams, that play store is full of that. And it's advertised front and center.
When you select an app to install on Google Play, it takes you to another screen confirming the install. But that install button on top is not for the app you selected, it's for a different, advertised app. You have to scroll down to find the confirmation button for the app you already instructed the store to install.
This isn't going to ruin any lives, but it's gross.
I chose it because I liked the previous iterations of Google TV. It integrated with everything else, had a nice app ecosystem, and you could put the stuff you watched within a couple of remote key presses. In this new version you are forced to click over icon after icon of paid content before are allowed to see the icons you are allowed to arrange.
Replacing the TV is out, unfortunately. Finding a different UI is on my to-do list. Google TV used to a checkbox feature for me. They've turned it into "check if a device has it, and run away screaming if it does" feature.
Chrome on Android was their first move in that direction, with it's inability to host ad blockers. It must have been a wild success for them because now many Google products have the same "ads shoved down your throat" feel to them, and yes the Play store is another stand out example.
I assume once the Chinese TV manufacturers figure out Google TV is an anti-feature, they will come up with their own replacement. That day can't come fast enough. That's an odd, because I never thought I'd be cheering Chinese software on, given their repeated attacks on the infrastructure of my country. And the the bastards are still doing it. But Trump has lowered the bar so dramatically on so many things. It's a strange new world.
I have never seen such absolute design and engineering genius.
I mean, absolutely retarded.
Every time I use the web using 5G data or public wifi, I regret the experience. Then I immediately turn on an adblocking VPN.
I use AdNauseum instead of plain uBlock as just an added layer of protection but it's rarely needed.
It really feels like being assaulted. Watching chill content only to have some ad scream at you, does not make me want to buy your product. I actively go out of my way not to buy things advertised to me on YouTube.
Do companies even care anymore? Is everyone THAT desperate for advertising revenue?
I am insulted by the so-called "modern" browser controlled and distributed by (a) companies that sell internet advertising services or (b) their business partners
The ad annoyances would not be possible but for these bloated, sluggish, omnibus programs enabling data collection, ads and tracking by default^1
Every time I have to use one of these programs to access the web it is a terrible experience. Never having visited a crack den, I cannot say whether it is similar. In any event, it's bad
Sometimes I use these browsers to access files offline or on own local network, such as MP4s and PDFs; I think maybe that is all they might be good for
As "ad blockers" depend 100% on the so-called "modern" browser I would be very surprised if "ad blockers" remain effective for much longer, maybe 5-10 years at most; I dislike making predictions but I believe the end of the "ad blocker" as browser extension is inevitable
Already this prediction is starting to come true in Chrome
1. "The message won't be shown in browsers that don't support JavaScript, because those don't need adblockers to begin with." Even just a browser that did not enable Javascript by default would suffice
But I'm insulted, too
2. "exposed by" <-- so-called "modern" browser
When #2 is not used, there is no need for #1
That is, #2 creates the need for #1
If stop using #2, then "ads" problem is solved
And attention and privacy.
This notice is a great idea.
I might remove the "like" from the notice, since "uBlock Origin" is good, but some others are questionable or even outright malware.
BTW, note that the `ublockorigin.com` Web site that is linked to isn't by Raymond Hill, leader of uBlock Origin. It looks well-intended, and is nicely polished UX, but good practice would be to be careful (since it doesn't appear to be under Hill's control, and is an additional point of potential compromise in what would be very valuable malware). Hill seems to operate from <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock>. One link that isn't too bad to view <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/README.md>. Another that isn't great but OK is <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki>.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock?tab=readme-ov-file#ublock-...
The recent PuTTY domain squatting debacle has made me suspicious, and indeed... if you look closer, you'll notice that the owner of ublockorigin.com is also advertising his completely unrelated products in a "my other tools" section.
I knew they recently added a new official page under https://putty.software but was unaware of any squatting debacle. For those wanting to know more: https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/17/puttyorg_website_cont...
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/
https://web.archive.org/web/20230219020056/https://www.ic3.g...
Malware is absolutely distributed through ads. In the case of more reputable ad platforms that don’t allow arbitrary scripts, it’s by linking to malware, but they’re also used to serve drive-by exploits.
> You have higher chance of getting a malware from `pnpm add` than seeing an ad on the web.
If you’re a normal computer user who browses the web without an ad blocker and never runs `pnpm add`, the relevant chance is a little different. (Fun side fact: current pnpm wisely doesn’t run install scripts by default.)
Ads are basically running a program they wrote on your computer. If there’s any exploitable feature in your browser’s JS sandbox, count on someone sending you an ad that will exploit it.
https://www.techradar.com/news/this-fake-gimp-google-ad-just...
I'm skeptical that inside counsel would really have an issue with adblock or a moderate approach -- whitelist a subset of a subset of sites like YouTube that they might see risk.
The benefits are tremendous.
I found the Orion browser and am never touching Safari again.
Banks, Defense, etc.
Do your part.
There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then services won't host the content, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy the services they use in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target).
If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make their own service work or investigate the long list of alternative platforms.
If the ad was delivered without cookies and without tracking, as just a stationary gif, I'd be more okay with it.
But without tracking, back in 2008/9 ish before the real estate crash, the Simpsons made a reference to the dancing cowboys ad for selling mortgages. These were the adjustable rate mortgages that went sky high shortly after closing on the house.
https://trailers.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1f73a011-858b-418b-940...
The technical details do not matter. Social contacts are about societal expectations, not about your personal ones. Do you think a thief has a meeting of the minds about not stealing something from a shop keeper? It's not the theifs world view that matters here. Similar to your example the physics of the world say it's possible for a human to pick up an item without paying for it, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
Or (back on topic) when I'm watching cable TV and they send an ad over the wire. There's no societal expectation that I watch that ad. I could hit the mute button. I could get up to take a piss or grab a beer. I could record the broadcast and watch it later, fast forwarding through the ads.
This is not like a store where there's a clear societal expectation that I don't go in and rob them. I don't think anyone would equate leaving the sofa during a commercial with robbery.
Yes, there is. If you had a group of 100 people and asked what google.com should look like and showed them how Chrome renders the page and your 80x24 modification does that all 100 would say that yours is not expected. You are still too hung up on these technical details of how things are implemented than how the average person thinks of these things.
There is not, and has never been, a social contract that says I have to look at the ads served with any website. If you think there is, then I'm sorry, but you're sorely mistaken.
Similarly, there is no social contract that says I have to watch commercials while I'm watching TV (not that I've watched linear TV in over a decade, but...). I can mute it, change the channel, go to the bathroom, whatever. If you think there is, then I'm not sure what to tell you; your opinions on this are so outside the mainstream that we're not going to see eye-to-eye on this.
We were talking about societal expectations.
>I can mute it, change the channel, go to the bathroom, whatever.
You are free to do the same for websites. You can click the x button on the ad, mute the video ad, or change to a different website.
And those that disagreed would still think it in their heads.
People like free stuff.
There is no more honour involved as when someone pays the mob for protection. I strongly reject this argument. I am bound by honour but they can do anything and change the contract unilaterally? Fuck them, that’s no contract at all.
And there is no alternative to YouTube, for example, including for videos that were uploaded before they went completely overboard with ads.
So no, I am not giving up on my ad blockers.
This is an exaggeration. There are ad free alternatives.
>And there is no alternative to YouTube
Youtube has a subscription you can pay for no ads. There other video sites who charge a subscription instead of offering ads too.
Again, their (mostly Google and Facebook’s, but there are many companies tracking me with whom I never had direct contact) trackers are all over the web and I see them in the blocked list very regularly on websites that have nothing to do with them.
> Youtube has a subscription you can pay for no ads. There other video sites who charge a subscription instead of offering ads too.
Yeah, cool. They changed their terms of use, and I changed mine. Happy to negotiate when they are available.
Their software is running on my computer. I decide what scripts I want or don't, and I can and will block whatever the fuck with impunity.
If they can't prevent that, or it's too expensive, or they don't care, that's not my problem. That's a business problem. Its not my business. I don't care.
Its like getting a free sample at Costco and then taking it home and throwing it away. That's my right. I can do that if I want.
If you want to run software on my computer, you play by my rules. That means an ad blocker. If you don't like that then figure it out. I'm not gonna figure it out for you.
>Its like getting a free sample at Costco and then taking it home and throwing it away. That's my right. I can do that if I want.
It's also like stealing a TV from Costco. Just because you technically can pick up a TV and then bring it to your car without paying and drive off, doesn't mean you should do it. It's unfair to Costco for them to play by your rules.
I'm not wanting anything, I'm telling you literally they are playing by my rules.
They are requesting to run scripts on my computer. It is my computer. If I say no, then the answer is no.
This is merely a request from them. I can abide, and I often will, but I have absolutely no moral, technical, or legal obligation to do so.
> I's also like stealing a TV from Costco.
No, because that's illegal.
You are REQUESTING to run advertisement scripts on my computer. I can deny that request.
If you don't like that, then don't allow me access. It is my responsibility, solely, to decide what scripts are running on my computer.
If Google asked you to download heartbleed and run it, you wouldn't do it, would you? Great, so you understand the concept.
The disconnect here is you believe I am entitled. And I am - I am entitled to deciding what runs on my computer.
You are not entitled to run arbitrary code on my computer because your business model requires it. I'm not your accountant, figure it out.
But why is it illegal if it's physically possible for you to take it? By your line of reasoning it shouldn't be illegal in the first place.
>You are REQUESTING to run advertisement scripts on my computer.
That's an implementation detail of how the webpage works and does not matter. You are focusing too much on the way it's implemented and not the high level picture of how it works. If you have to get to the point of describing the HTTP protocol to justify why what you are doing is moral, you need to realize that you are just coming up with a justification for your actions to not feel bad about doing bad things. You should just accept that you are being greedy and you will block ads because you don't care if creators make money from ads and want to prioritize having an ad free experience.
Lol, not bending over and letting whoever the fuck run whatever the fuck programs on my computer is an "implementation detail".
> You should just accept that you are being greedy and you will block ads because you don't care if creators make money from ads and want to prioritize having an ad free experience.
This is so, so obviously wrong it's actually frustrating I have to reply to this level of rhetoric.
Once again, I am not your accountant. It is not my responsibility to make sure your business model makes sense.
I don't have the time to babysit and hand hold every corporation in my life and make sure their business model makes sense. I just don't, and it's not my responsibility.
If your business model relies solely on me allowing you to run potential malware on my computer, then that is YOUR problem. Not mine. Figure it out, or don't. Youre always allowed to go bankrupt. Not every business model is viable.
You are not entitled to a viable business model. You are not God. If your business model doesn't work, then you lose. Too bad, so sad, not my fucking problem.
And on the topic of money: running ads on my computer is a computer system security problem.
The FBI recommends running an aggressive ad blocker. The reality is most ads are basically malware and often literally malware. They can be phishing, linking to malicious sites. They can be deceptive. They can be spyware, collecting information about my computer, identity, or web browsing activity.
Google, Meta, et. all have demonstrated they simply do not take adequate steps to prevent malicious advertisement payloads.
You do not have a god-given right to run software on my computer, but you CERTAINLY don't have a god-given right to run malware on my computer.
If you disagree, take it up with the FBI, I don't care.
Attempting to normalize such a thing is disgusting.
Alternatively, they can also refuse to serve you their content unless you turn off your ad blocker. Which would be fine. It is their content they're hosting after all.
And it's also fine for you to decide not to turn off your ad blocker and not view their content.
I wonder why not many websites do this """adblocking freeloaders""" is such a big issue?
Mega corporations that have been sucking up personal data for a couple decades now are not people. There is no social contract with them. They just sell your data.
If you know what they are doing, know how to block it, and refuse to, you are complicit in making the world a worse place. Corporations are not people that should be treated with the respect you are talking about.
The reality is very much the opposite, they're about maximising revenue for monopolies. I see no social contract here.
IMHO this is a very wrong take. Mega corporations are people. Demonstration: nobody goes to work at Google for a while. Everything stops, technical stuff and non technical stuff. No people, no corporations, small ones and large ones.
The trouble is the ad-blockers will block their ads as well. Visit somewhere like John Gruber's Daring Fireball site which has the least offensive ad placement possible yet his adverts are still blocked.
* Autoplay videos that preemptively take my bandwidth.
* Autoplay audio that takes over my speakers unexpectedly and interrupts other things.
* Forms of pop-ups that clutter or disrupt my tab/window control.
* Being spied-on by a system that tries to aggregate and track all of my browsing habits.
* A mostly unaccountable vector for malware and phishing sites.
* Just a genuinely horrible experience whenever a page is one part content to three parts blinking blooping ever shifting ads that would make Idiocracy blush.
They try to pretend customer resistance is just over the most innocent and uncontroversial display of ads, but it's not true, and it hasn't been for decades.
[1] https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/5/4496852/adblock-plus-eye-g...
(Then on mobile, similarly using Firefox on iOS, being heavy and fast on the "ask app not to track" buttons and keeping logins to first party apps only and almost never in either Safari or Firefox.)
Again, I use no real "ad blocker", just the above steps.
It's probably not an approach for everyone, and entails a bit of paranoia to operate, but I think it sends the right message that I don't mind untracked/untargeted ads and don't think companies deserve my unfiltered data.
I wrote this one to remove all <iframe> elements, which is where most of the worst distractions live. I mostly only use it when a site has gone too far.
javascript:(function () {
const rm = () => document.querySelectorAll('iframe')
.forEach(f => f.remove());
let timeout;
const debouncedRm = () => {
clearTimeout(timeout);
timeout = setTimeout(rm, 100);
};
rm();
new MutationObserver(debouncedRm)
.observe(document.body, {
childList: true,
subtree: true
});
})();The actual freeloaders are the ISPs, because they don't share the profits with the networks they provide access to.
In a better world, Browsers would all be peer to peer, and share their caches end-to-end, with verifiable content hashes, so that websites don't need to provide the majority of bandwidth.
But here we are, Google not giving a fuck because they actually like being a monopoly that does not need to create a healthy ecosystem because everyone involved is paying them anyways. With resources, and with money. Who would have thought?
Their behavior is abusive, and our behavior is self defense.
Let the ads networks do the hard work of 1) cleaning up their act, and 2) rebuilding trust before you worry about your end of the social contract.
[1]: https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-recommends-installing-an-ad-b...
The context is that the courts have found Google holds two illegal monopolies within the online adtech market [1], the remedy for which has yet to be determined. Furthermore the DoJ has sued Meta for holding one as well and that trial is now underway. [2]
I don't know about you, but to me, if the counterparty breaches a contract, that contract is now null and void. Same goes for a social contract, and if someone tries to kill me or rob me, whatever social contract we may have had, is now null and void.
Fortunately Google and Meta aren't actually taking hits out on anyone as far as I know, but the fact remains that the market makers for these online ads, are either outright convicted criminals, or being sued by the government for such. I don't see that we have any social contract to respect or allow any of this. It is right, just and moral to oppose the very existence of online advertising in my opinion, until the illegal abuses are corrected.
If the court has resolved that Google's breaking the law, how about we get an injunction ordering them to halt their ad tech business until the remedies are implemented. Why are we going so easy on them?
You don't owe crooks anything, neither do I.
This isn't about being cheap or breaking a fair deal. It's about asking that law and order be restored within American business and society. What's the point of this society, what moral justification does it have to exist as it is, if it keeps on breaking its own laws to protect the most powerful?
Now it's unfortunate that publishers (websites) get caught in the crossfire of this, they might not agree with me when I say you should oppose all online ads full stop until the problem is corrected, but they are getting screwed by Google and Meta and they would be more than happy to see justice done.
[1] https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/18/court-ruling-agains... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Meta
They're totally right of course and my question is - how bad would all this be if the biggest ad market maker wasn't an actual literal convicted-by-multiple-courts criminal with the second biggest market maker not far behind? What if these guys had just followed the existing laws that are on the books?
Well I don't know but I bet it would be better somehow and the only way to find out is to finally start enforcing the law.
I'm sure ads would be better somehow if there were fewer criminals involved. One obvious theory is that Google is underpaying the publishers and the publishers have resorted to dirtier tricks in response. Another is that Google implements stuff everyone else hates because hello monopoly, where else are you going to go? Maybe the lawbreakers cause the slop.
If ads weren't profitable, you wouldn't find no results for your search about which kitchen knife to buy, you would would find better, less weaponised, more relevant results. If you don't block ads then you are directly contributing to a world with more ads and less content.
Ad networks have been that invasive since the early 2000s. They now only support more channels. It is a stone old business and literal the source of Google finances for a very long time.
And the reason that business model is viable is because people don't realize how literally valuable their attention is. And most people also think they're not heavily affected by advertising. Sites are actively exploiting this to deter competition. I would not be, in the least bit, sad to see this state of affairs end.
That existed in past. It was a program you had to run, and it would force you to watch ads (while browsing?). IIRC it embedded MSIE. I was still in high school, and my classmate who had cable internet would run this almost 24/7. It made him earn a couple of hundreds of dollars (end of 90s). There were also all kind of hacks to make it not so annoying (because you had to watch it all the time). Eventually, they quit paying.
There's also a TV you can get for free (it being worth 600 EUR?), but it has a camera and watches your living room 24/7 (if the TV is in your living room?). It also has very strict ToS.
An advert is an investment: someone pays money to broadcast something and hopes that will generate awareness. Any investment is allowed to fail.
You know what's even uglier? The notion that because I got access to a bit of your free content, I should then be completely fine with utterly pervasive, deeply granulated parasitic tracking, measuring, watching, spying and recording of as many of my habits as possible. This is a sick notion, an idiotically, disgustingly fucked up concept of fairness and those who subscribe to it are either deluded or neatly entrenched in earning from it.
No, nobody has any "right" to expect people to submit to utter surveillance because that person created content that they can't get enough people to pay for directly. I'd rather see any sites on the web that can't sustain themselves without such ad garbage burn and die than make it somehow punishable to evade their shitty cookies and other trash.
With that said, unlike many on HN comments, I also don't think ads should be banned.
Those are the reasons tracker blockers were created in the first place. Advertisers went too far and now they lost control and weep.
My privacy, attention and digital security is not worth sacrificing for those greedy, unregulated people.
Literally nothing prevents a blog from having static images for sponsored content. Yet, nobody does it.
For instance, I'm fine with video creators having sponsored sequences because I can skip them if I want. And there's no way for them to know if I watched the ad. In fact, they don't care because they already got paid.
And yet, HN (a text-based website) has advertising. It is a small headline in the list. Do people block this? I don't, and I am quite an adblocking person.
I actually believe billboards are a net minus for public safety. Just like you wouldn't want all kind of unnecessary traffic signs.
> I'm fine with video creators having sponsored sequences because I can skip them if I want.
I'm not fine with them because skipping the obvious segments doesn't mean the rest of the content isn't compromised due to the financial incentive to not upset those advertisers.
That day instead, when i opened the page 3-4 other pages opened as soon as the website loaded, all serving loud and obnoxious virus alerts, porn and some other crap. But how? I disabled popups a long time ago.
That day i found out about self-clicking ads. That day i installed an ad blocker.
It is THEM that have broken the social contract. Screw them and screw ads.
(good thing that i wasn't on dialup anymore. Anybody remember that? scam sites that would make your dialup bill go up crazy, as if you were calling a courier's help line)
At this point I’d prefer it all to disappear entirely along with the content that “can’t exist” without it. I’m pretty sure we’d be ok.
[0] Sounds dramatic, but it’s basically true.
That hasn't been true for decades. In a way the race to bottom has already finished, we are at "100% clickbait" stage. I checked it very carefully and both Android build in "news" page and Microsoft's equivalent in Win11 Weather&News Widget are just that.
Yes, there is. It's, "I ask your server for bytes, and if your server gives them to me, I interpret and display them however I wish".
The idea that someone downloading a webpage from a publicly-hosted web server could be a "freeloader" is ludicrous.
If you really must extract some form of payment from literally everyone who visits your site, you'll have to put up a paywall. Otherwise, if you give me content when I request it, I'm going to display it however I want.
> If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine
The "contract" you describe is just something you made up. I've been on the internet since the early 90s, and that has never ever ever been the deal.
Advertising is malware for your brain. I won't let it in, and no one else should either.
The reason why some people get to browse the internet free, and without ads, is because there are some people that don't. Hence the 'leeching' part.
The part that annoys me sometimes, is that when there IS the option to pay to remove ads, and people still use adblockers in this case. How is this justifiable, morally?
If anything is a social contract then it's that if you want to provide a paid service you are up front about requiring payment. Ad-supported websites don't much care about that social contract because they think it's more profitable to pretend to be free when they are not.
These small bloggers/websites are letting the huge ad corporations take up the butcher job and cry when people use adblock.
Google provides a way to turn off ad personalization and when i turn it off you know what i see. Scam/adult/gambling ads and these small websites/bloggers are ok with showing scams to earn 0.01cents. then where they broke the social contract.
Google/meta with all the policing of billion youtube/fb videos/posts dont have same policing for ads quality. Thats where they broke the social contract.
Yes they need to make money, one alternative, I am ok with companies using my compute to run crypto mining( or scientific worlloadw ) when i use their website instead of ads. Small companies should look out of box for money rather than employing a butcher to make money.
This is why I don't go as far as running sponsorblock. Yes the sponsored segments can be irritatingly repetative¹ but at least they don't result in direct commercial stalking, popups, surprise audio/video, etc, and they more directly benefit the content makers.
--------
[1] sponsor segments are actually useful for juding creators: if one I would otherwise trust starts parroting the smae script as others but trying to make it sound like they wrote it themselves ("my favourite feature is …") then I know to tone my level of trust down a notch as it is then clear their opinions have a price.
Read any SEO blog and you will see how absurd this claim is.
It is simply not true.
I would care much less if tracking/personalisation was not part of the ad systems and we were just shown ads based on the content of a webpage. Actually, I am ok with stuff like sponsor segments from content creators, sponsored articles etc. There are ways to serve ads without invading privacy or making it disturbing, but modern advertising industry has chosen a different path.
There are also alternative models, subscriptions, actually buying and *owning* the content (how outdated! let's have ads instead), donations, having a "pro" version with extra optional features etc. There is important stuff in the internet (eg wikipedia) that works fine without ads at all. But if you want to scale to a billion $$$ business maybe it makes sense to rely more on ads, but I do not find this compelling as an argument for users to suffer ads or part of any social contract.
How do you feel about ad blockers continually trying to evade detection, though?
Or guides about how to avoid things that block access to users of ad blockers?
I think the "you're free to block me for using an ad blocker!" argument doesn't mean much when said ad blockers do their best to not let that happen in the first place.
The goal of an adblocker is not just to block ads, but to block anything that isn't the content the user wishes to see. This includes calls to action, consent banners (despite websites wishing otherwise, the default answer is still "no"), and of course "please disable your adblocker."
Personally I don't just block ads, but as much of any third party js/requests I can without breaking a website. Websites do not load any third party js etc by default except from some whitelisted domains. This takes care of a big part of the most annoying things out there. If you do not want to serve me the website if I block this stuff, don't do so, I don't care.
If your business model is stupid, that's not my business. I don't run your accounting department, I'm not your CFO.
Figure it out, or don't. I don't have the time to handhold every corporation I interact with and make sure they're getting their money. They are not babies, and I am not their father.
No it isn't. Free websites exist: Wordpress, Blogger, Wix, Weebly etc. The only "ad" they show is a static banner for their own platform, not the giant scripts Google loads for Google Ads. Neocities and Digital Ocean are $5/mo for a custom domain and hosting, theme it anyway you like.
Most "content"-focused websites like Buzzfeed, The Verge, Gizmodo etc simply embed third party content (Youtube, Vimeo, Giphy, random poll generators) instead of hosting them on their domain. Much of their content is rehashing news articles with a paper-thin layer of "analysis" on top. Then they add metric tons of ads, and throw in affilliate link garbage "product reviews" on top.
This is the dropship-ification of the web and it pretty much killed the free website culture of the Geocities/Anglefire era.
My only "ad blocker" is Firefox enhanced tracking protection and walling off Facebook (Meta, but their only app I still use is Facebook), Amazon, and Google logins to separate containers and/or apps and/or private browsing tools. I feel like this is a good ethical compromise still fills my part of the social contract. If a site wants to show me the most generic, untargeted ads, I welcome that.
They don't get my data for free, that's not part of an ethical relationship with ad networks in my mind. I am happiest to keep them in the dark and feed them junk and lies, that is all I think that they deserve.
It's fascinating how the ad networks respond to this. Several, like Admiral (to especially call out at least one offender) whine loudly that I'm using an ad blocker because they've confused targeting and tracker blocking with ad blocking and ask me to disable it. They don't even try to show ads. It seems pretty clear what their real slimy game is and I don't think they deserve to exist. Ads existed for centuries without tracking and privacy violations. Ad "common sense" up until about the 1980s was the broader the message and distribution the better; demographics and targeting was about saving money with the trade off of losing potential audiences. The more you target an ad the less you benefit from people that didn't even know your product might apply to them, or to people that might buy it for others or as gifts. "Everyone knew that."
Google is nasty in its own ways. ReCaptchas get worse. YouTube ads have several levels of hell, including interruptions in parts of videos it shouldn't interrupt, all sorts of racist and intellectually disgusting groups (including but not limited to allowing outright scams, platforming disinformation, and spreading malware) it allows to buy ads, and how much it allows those groups to serve 30 minute/1 hour/2+ hour videos as "ads". It's amazing how many ads I've felt I had to report from hate groups alone. All of that seems to background radiation for everyone with access to Google's ad networks, but the less tracking data you have the fewer targeted ads you see and the more the mask off greed feeds you terrifying things that make you wonder how humanity is okay with all this and why Google isn't seen as more of a greedy, evil company for how much of this stuff they fail to vet and continue to associate their brand with.
Show me old family friendly TV advertising staples like Clorox ads and whatever the latest cereal fad is, please, I don't mind. That's a written social contract that worked for a long time, especially because it had rules like Truth in Advertising laws and followed ethics boundaries like brand contamination by association with criminals and liars. Targeted advertising is and was a mistake. Ad networks believing private data was their new playground and revenue gold mine was a mistake. Neither of those, I think fit the old social contracts about ad-subsidized content, and I think all we can do is send a message that both of them break the spirit of the contract and it is past time for a change/fix.
But that's also maybe just me and a personal crusade at this point. I don't see a lot of people going to the sort of privacy minded extremes I have and also still not install an actual ad blocker. But that's how I'm trying to square the ethics dilemma of appreciating ad-subsidized content, but also understanding that the internet is no longer safe without some sort of privacy-minded safeguards that companies like Admiral and Google are going around and calling "ad blocking", because it is starting to interfere with their real, more lucrative, and much more evil business models.
We do not have to feel guilty to act against them.
Btw, yesterday Chromium told me Ublock Origin is no longer supported. Well, thank you, now I know why I wasn't using Chromium for anything other than MS365 stuff. It's working just fine on Firefox.
Before that point I'd already spotted that limitation, but there might be an easy solution: get a domain added to a common block list used by DNS based blockers. If you get the right content from a resource on a host with that name (or the other test passes, so we test for both forms of blocker) show the message.
Of course there will be false positives if the page goes down or if they're is some other network issue, but no test like this will be perfect.
Anyone want to save me the research to find out the easiest way to get a domain on the lists? I have no objection to sacrificing a few £ per year on a name to use and I've got spare resource to serve the pile of tiny requests that'll go through because people aren't running a blocker.
EDIT: as a secondary note, I wouldn't just flip between “display:none” and “display:block” on one element upon detection result. That might cause visual disturbance in many page layouts as things load. I would leave a block of the same positioning and size properties in the flow in either case, either blank or with a message like “You'll be pleased to know that your ad blocker seems to be working.”, perhaps leaving the space blank (but still in the flow with the same dimensions) initially so an incorrect message isn't displayed if something (scripting being disabled client-side for instance) stops the tests running at all.
[1] https://home.cern/news/news/computing/computer-security-bloc...
I helped my wife with something the other day, noticed the ads everywhere, while I was sure I had installed uBlock for her in the past. Went to the Chrome's addons page, and Google apparently is automatically disabling uBlock and calling it unsupported, yet you can enable it until next time you restart Chrome. But seems Chrome is actively trying to get rid of adblockers lately.
Perhaps only enables js when user clicks something.
setTimeout(() => {
// fuck up all future javascripts
setTimeout = setInterval = requestAnimationFrame = () => {};
Element.prototype.appendChild = () => { throw new Error("Blocked"); };
document.addEventListener = () => {};
window.addEventListener = () => {};
Object.defineProperty(document, "readyState", { get: () => { throw new Error("No JS"); } });
document.write = () => {};
// fuck up canvas
if(window.HTMLCanvasElement) HTMLCanvasElement.prototype.getContext=()=>null;
// fuck up webgl
if(window.WebGLRenderingContext) window.WebGLRenderingContext.prototype.getParameter=function(){e=>{throw new Error("Blocked")}};
// fuck up webgl2
if(window.WebGL2RenderingContext) window.WebGL2RenderingContext.prototype.getParameter=function(){e=>{throw new Error("Blocked")}};
// fuck up websockets
window.WebSocket=function(){e=>{throw new Error("Blocked")}}; window.EventSource=function(){e=>{throw new Error("Blocked")}};
// fuck up popups
window.open=()=>null;
// ...
}, 500); const iframe = document.createElement("iframe");
document.body.append(iframe);
iframe.contentWindow... javascript:(function () {
const rm = () => document.querySelectorAll('iframe')
.forEach(f => f.remove());
let timeout;
const debouncedRm = () => {
clearTimeout(timeout);
timeout = setTimeout(rm, 100);
};
rm();
new MutationObserver(debouncedRm)
.observe(document.body, {
childList: true, subtree: true
});
})();By farbling I mean making the data look like it's the most common Windows configuration, for example.
You will have messed up layouts and unneeded quirks. Moreover, banks are using fingerprinting to detect fraud so you will have a hard time on those websites as well.
And more importantly.
Of course I wouldn't farble on my bank's website, that would be pretty stupid.
But by default I would want trackers to get the farbled data, and only allowlist the websites I trust. Same trust concept as with uBlock Origin, NoScript and others.
I have been thinking about some kind of render proxy that runs all the JS for you somewhere else in a sandbox and sends you the screenshot or rendered HTML instead. Or maybe we could leverage an LLM to turn the Bloated JS garbage into the actual information you are looking for.
Nah, this is just straight up false. Many pages work fine with NoScript blocking all scripts. For those that don't, you usually only have to allowlist the root domain, but you can still leave the other 32 domains they are importing blocked. It's actually surprisingly common for blocking JS to result in a better experience than leaving it enabled (eg no popups, no videos, getting rid of fade-ins and other stupid animations).
I won't argue if you think that is too much work, and I definitely wouldn't recommend it for a non-technical user, but it's not nearly as bad as you described.
I wasn't clear, but this is about my experience. Maybe you are in a different bubble. But I'm not able to book a hotel, browse GitHub, file my taxes, make a bank transfer or even look up the menu of a restaurant.
The only exceptions for me are HN and a handful of news websites.
This isn't really true. I ran an ad-supported site at one point with my content, just a small banner at the top of each page. The ads paid for a significant portion of my monthly rent. Getting a few dollars from the occasional viewer would not, since 99.99+% of people are not going to do that.
I don't like viewing ads, but let's not pretend like they don't make money for content creators. They absolutely do.
A person viewing ads over the course of a year is generating much, much more than a dollar in revenue.
And in a parallel universe without ads, they're definitely not sending a dollar to every site they visit.
You can't compare one person who sends a dollar to a site with one person's ad revenue to a site, because as I said, 99.99+% of people are never going to send you a dollar.
The author is implying ads don't generate meaningful revenue but paying a dollar does. That's just false.
The parallel universe I'd like is where websites/publishers had small, privacy protecting, static banners or ad text on their sites. In that universe lots more people would feel comfortable with not using ad blockers.
All I'm saying is that the author is painting this fantasy picture that individuals voluntarily sending a dollar to site creators is somehow a substitute for, or even better than, the ad revenue they get. It's not. It's not even close.
Everyone agrees ads are terrible. The issue is that nobody has been able to come up with a viable alternative. Lots of ideas around micropayments exist, but so far they've failed for all sorts of reasons.
Of course highlighting this fact that the presence of an adblocker is detectable, unfortunately only results in escalating the cat-and-mouse game further.
I have also considered popularising a script that replaces the whole page's content with "JavaScript detected, please disable it to view this content and improve your security".
Find something off the beaten path that works for you and it will rarely need updates.
This is exactly what most dark net markets do.
It's like a leech, and they want you to think it's a symbiotic relationship.
Instead of adblockers, I remember sites that are user hostile one way or another and just avoid those sites. Those sites that are heavy on ads usually aren't worth my time anyway, so the presence of those auto-playing videos in every corner ends up being a signal for me to go somewhere else.
I wonder if they actually watch the ads on purpose, even in private or if they turn their adblocker off just for the video, as not to give ideas to their viewers and potentially losing ad revenue.
The chance that he was using one the whole damn time? 100%
Bug report: There's a typo in the actual popup as shown to me, it says "extention". Consistently enough, the typo is present in the code snippet in the article:
if (!document.cookie.includes("notice-shown")) {
document.getElementById("ad-note-hidden").id = 'ad-note';
document.getElementById("ad-note-content-wrapper").innerHTML = "No adblocker detected. " +
"Consider using an extention like <a href=https://ublockorigin.com/>uBlock Origin</a> to save time and bandwidth." +
" <u onclick=hide()>Click here to close.</u>";
}Some services claim to turn "anonymous" visitors into actual email addresses (and some other basic info), likely via identity graphs (IP/device/hashed IDs).
I've heard of cases where people are getting outreached (via email) after just visiting a product website, even with an ad blocker on, using a private browser (Brave or similar).
Opensend is one example. They're pretty open about it in their FAQ [1].
That’s a pretty crazy statement. How often do you see loading a CSS stylesheet fail to load? Most sites are completely unusable without their stylesheets and I don’t recall the last time I saw a stylesheet fail to load.
Often. It might have something to do with my adblock settings though...
> Most sites are completely unusable without their stylesheets
Those sites are generally completely trash anyway.
I wouldn't say often, but it certianly happens often enough that I make sure my own designs work well enough (the content is visible at least, even if it is hellish ugly) if external resources like that fail to load.
The most frequent cause is a site that is overloaded due to a hug from HN or similar, the main request going through OK but some of the subsequent ones timing out. It is getting less common with servers that support HTTP2/HTTP3 so pipeline better, as the usual failure point in these cases is in opening a connection not while reading the response (or the server generating that response).
It can also happen if static content is served from a different place, and that is down but the host serving the main content is not.
It's also deeply paternalistic: Even if it is meant well - and I assume that's the case here - it implies the site operator knows better than the user what is good for them.
Finally, this will also lower the guards of less technical users for installing random plug-ins on website demand.
From a subjective gut feeling: Please do not do this. Let people decide what they need, and what they don't need.
This already happens with every ad successfully shown to a person. Why don't you criticize the ad business for much more extensive overreach instead of someone doing harmless activism on their own website?
This is far from the same as the overreach of many (most?) ads. From the description: “It’s shown off to the side, and never covers content. It won’t be shown if there isn’t enough space.”. In fact the space issue is overly careful, on my protrait 1080p monitor it doesn't show because 1080 pixels is just a little too thin for its test.
And someone who is used to how things are without a blocker, is unlikely to notice this extra little (non-animated, soundless, out-of-the-way) message in the general melée!
> Finally, this will also lower the guards of less technical users for installing random plug-ins on website demand.
That is a fair point (though those guards seem so low enough already in general that this will make litle real world difference). Instead of pointing to a particular thing to install, when I do this on my output I'll point to a page listing common options and a warning about installing random stuff without at least minimal research.
Whether it is technically enforceable in your particular case may be the question. But historically, it has been enforced outside the EU.
As you live in the Bay Area - the CCPA and the CPRA, which are similar in many ways and seem to require an opt-out mechanism (e.g. if you operate a commercial website with >100k devices accessing it during a year).
Talk to a lawyer, don't take advice from strangers on the internet.
I disagree with this. Tencent WeChat targets the entire world, including people living in the EU. They do not follow GDPR.
Likewise, Facebook targets people living everywhere, including in China. They do not follow Chinese laws.
Hence, China sets up a firewall and blocks Facebook.
EU can set up a firewall too if they don't like something.
"Oh but EU doesn't do firewalls?" Not my problem. Tough luck. China, Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, all did it, you can too if you have beef with foreign websites.
But no, I do not need to follow EU law just because EU users use my thing. It's on them to firewall it if they don't like my website.
> CCPA and the CPRA
This is fine. I live in California, I need to follow California law, and I can choose to live somewhere else if I don't like it. What I'm not okay with is some distant jurisdiction thinking they can make laws that I "need" to follow.
Why don't we have a browser flag that sends a request header telling the site our preference automatically so we can avoid these popups?
This causes all the stupid GDPR popup sites to not "remember" my preferences because they ironically need to use a cookie to store the preference of declining cookies, so they appear again each time because my browser doesn't store that decline cookie between sessions.
The law is (paraphrasing) "You must use cookies or similar to be evil without permission". Advertising companies decided that instead of not being evil, they'd annoy users into giving permission.