[sigma2015]

There are so many premises wrong here - it hurts:

1. The majority of people in fact doesn't care about being tracked - "hackers" (and also myself) do care though - but that's a minority.

2. Most people like good advertisement.

3. It's wrong to just naturally assume that ads have to be annoying. A discreet, not-moving, not-animated ad is not bothering anybody.

4. Just as most people aren't willing to pay for content they aren't willing to pay for the maintenance of ad blockers - which is why the devs of those ABs will (and as a matter of fact) already offer whitelisting for money. [http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/over-300-businesses-...]

5. More and more web-sites will simply deny access to their content if ad blocking is detected.

6. The HN people's perspective on ads is in each and every way not that of the majority of people potentially clicking ads. We are not the driving force.

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The equilibrium will be Ad Blockers that white list benevolent and discreet ads - advertisement as an income source will become less attractive but it won't go away.

Also Ad Blocking depends on detectable code or ad servers. If the ad dissemination technology shifts accordingly then Ad Blockers simply won't be able to detect ads any longer.