[xthestreams]

I guess the stuff you're talking about totally falls under my "only block ads on those websites which clearly have no consideration for usability [...] or for privacy"

I didn't say that ads are great. I said that NOT ALL ads are bad, and without them some great content couldn't exist, because most people need funds for their work and selling stuff or services sometimes isn't an option.

So if you're talking about tracking ads, I'm totally with you. But if you're talking about ALL ads, then your idea may be an utopia.

[kerkeslager]

> I said that NOT ALL ads are bad

Ads are inherently trying to make me want something I don't want, so I'd say that all ads are bad.

> most people need funds for their work and selling stuff or services sometimes isn't an option.

Why is that, exactly?

Nobody has to sell ads. If you business only works because you sell ads, your business model doesn't (or shouldn't) work. I don't think that we as a society benefit from propping up businesses who produce content that is so low-quality that nobody would pay money for it.

> So if you're talking about tracking ads, I'm totally with you.

What ads aren't tracking me? There are only a few ad networks who even claim not to track you, and it's unclear how many ads those companies actually serve up--it's certainly not a large portion of the ads on the internet. And as far as I know none of the ad companies out there have open-sourced their code, so whether they're telling the truth is a big open question. Advertisers certainly have lied about this in the past. Apple, for example, has been dinged for this a few times, while trying to sell itself as a privacy advocating company.

WITH evidence, click through and conversion rates are very low already, so it's pretty hard to persuade advertisers to advertise without collecting as much data about you as possible. So nearly all the ads out there are tracking ads. Even if you only accept that all tracking ads are bad, the word "tracking" is only a minor technicality.