I don't consider myself/users responsible for solving the broken business model of a big part of the modern web. The problem of ads is not just "I do not like ads", which is also a valid reason imo concerning how intrusive and distracting they are blinking and yelling around and making everything slower, but a matter of privacy and safety. There is no social contract that accepts this. Moreover, I have no way to actually know or consent to be served ads before actually loading them, so I have to use an adblocker just in case. I would not mind if a website detects my adblocker and not serving me the content either. So in this sense, imo if a website decides to serve me the content without ads it is up to them, not me.

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There are also alternative models, subscriptions, actually buying and *owning* the content (how outdated!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.

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rkomorn 3 days ago | parent [-]

> I would not mind if a website detects my adblocker and not serving me the content either.

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.

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freehorse 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I believe that if websites actually cared, if adblockers was a big issue for them, they would get to detect when a user uses one, eg by looking at specific parts of the webpage that are not loaded. There are some that do it. Even if it turned out to be an arm's race, it is a socially beneficial one imo, because it could reduce the appeal of the tracking-advertising model, by increasing the cost of keeping it up. But that's not what is going on here.

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.

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hananova 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The websites are in their right to try to detect adblockers, and the adblockers are equally in their right to avoid detection. If a website really cares, they can try harder.

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."

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rkomorn 2 days ago | parent [-]

If you had a switch you could turn on that makes your browser send a header that states you use an ad blocker, and that the website could reliably use to decide to show you nothing (including no ads, obviously), would you use it?

	▲	freehorse 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		If the websites had a similar switch to make it easy for me to decline being tracked, sure. But why should I care about making it "easy for them" if they do not make it easy for me? So that they make more $$$ more easily?