I have an imperfect "canary in the coalmine" test for whether/where the principled/idealist nerds have the power vs the mercenary/cynical nerds have the power:

Advertisers vs Ad Blockers - as long as the Ad Blockers are blocking the vast majority of junk, I feel like team principles is winning. Like they have more nerd power to outsmart the lesser nerds working on team mercenary.

But there are places like Facebook where that is not the case. And even in Youtube, team mercenaries has recently won some territory from team principles.

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geraldwhen 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are currently multiple trivial ways for a layman to block all YouTube ads.

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andrenotgiant 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

mostly true - but youtube has experimented with forcing a "loading state" for ad block users that was the same duration as the ads they would have watched. https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1l7b3c8/strange_lo...

	▲	shifto a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		And I didn't even mind. Rather watch 15s of black screen than an obnoxious ad.
	▲	telesilla a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Is it possible that different regions have different ad experiences? I've not seen a single ad nor hint of one in a long time using the Brave browser on both android and desktop. Primarily in Europe.

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dozerly 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Clearly the original comment is from a mercenary nerd who has not heard of DNS blocking of ads.

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move-on-by 2 days ago | parent [-]

I’ve been very involved with the DNS blocking scene- and it’s extremely easy to circumvent. I always wonder if there are some principled nerds on the architecture side purposely designing things to be easily blocked with DNS blocking. Or perhaps the mercenary nerds are just that inept. Maybe a mix. I also don’t think the numbers of users with DNS blocking are large enough for the mercenary nerds to care about. However, the math for LoE to bypass DNS blocking has certainly changed recently.

	▲	spwa4 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not. You forget the disadvantage the mercenary nerds have - they do not, and can not, trust each other. So having the same company serve ads as is serving the content can never happen because mercenaries can't resist cheating and so advertisers won't trust them (after being burned way too many times)

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1vuio0pswjnm7 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are also multiple ways to avoid ads without "blocking"

Ingress and egress traffic is allowed, not blocked, but requests for ads, tracking, telemetry, etc., if any, fail

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traverseda 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you are using a real computer or can sideload apps.

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ofrzeta 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

For some definition of layman, I guess.

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nathan_compton 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I would happily, delightedly, see the entire internet disappear in a puff of smoke, to remove ads from the world. Honestly, I'd be happy to see everything on the internet except the wikipedia vanish regardless, at this point.

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kzrdude 2 days ago | parent [-]

Much of the mundane world - tv, bus stops, and so on seems to have ads. While in my nerd domain, my computer, I don't see ads at all. So it would seem that open source software is letting me live without ads on the internet, from home.

I was even annoyed at the ads in a paper newspaper I was leafing through, I'm not just used to them and I think some of them were a bit dishonest and scummy.

	▲	Ntrails 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Compared to the 40 ft led screen blaring images out to everyone 24h a day in central London I will take the newspaper any day. Drives me nuts