I'm So Tired of Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#81

Post by M95D » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 8:58 AM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #75

Shuang1 wrote: post #10

I use an adblocker and I have for a while now. Every so often I hear a moral argument about why adblockers are bad (ads support free internet, etc) but to be completely honest, I simply don't care anymore. Advertising is in such a malicious state that yes, I'm going to put my own experience quality over whatever collective good there is in watching ads.

What if the advertising services company (Google) and/or its partner (Mozilla) that produce the source code for popular "browsers" remove the ability for users to run "adblockers" What then These entities often claim the code is "open source" Perhaps users will start compiling the browser themselves and keep the code to run user extensions/add-ons Maybe they will let "AI" agents compile Firefox for them The www was d…

> What then

Same as today.

99% of users won't even know about it, or care.

1% of users will complain and get ignored, or called Luddites.

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#82

Post by ryandvm » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

pibaker wrote: post #66

matheusmoreira wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How far would you push this argument? Is it mind rape to hold up a political sign in a public square, because they are forcing their opinions into other people who happen to be there?

"Mind rape" is obviously an attention grabbing way of putting it, but I tend to agree that advertising is essentially theft.

It goes something like this:

   * You only have a finite amount of attention. You cannot obviously "pay attention" to everything around you.
   * When someone takes your attention, they are consuming some of your finite resource.
   * Taking something from someone else is the very definition of theft.

Now obviously we have social norms around attention that allow for a reasonable amount of this non-consensual attention consumption. Things like, make your signage inoffensive, unobtrusive, and generally placed in a way that it is a net positive (the hot dog prices should be near the hot dog vendor).

But what we don't have, at least in the US, are strong laws and norms that protect people from this. Why does an lawyer get to steal my attention on the beach with a plane dragging a banner? Why does a storefront get to blast an ad at me when I walk by? Does anybody really think these examples are a net societal benefit?

Re: I'm So Tired of Ads

#83

Post by ikidd » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

Shuang1 wrote: post #10

I use an adblocker and I have for a while now. Every so often I hear a moral argument about why adblockers are bad (ads support free internet, etc) but to be completely honest, I simply don't care anymore. Advertising is in such a malicious state that yes, I'm going to put my own experience quality over whatever collective good there is in watching ads.

The thing is, and the article said it, I'm not going to click your ad. Period. That's why I have an ad blocker. So there's no lost revenue, because you'll never, ever get a clickthrough from me.