At least for now, I think ad-blocking should be optional, as it is in the new Opera beta, but I think tracking-protection (against third-party cross-site tracke

At least for now, I think ad-blocking should be optional, as it is in the new Opera beta, but I think tracking-protection (against third-party cross-site trackers) should be the default in browsers. In fact, browser vendors should not just use "tracking blacklists" (as Firefox does now), but they should be working on new standards that break websites that use cross-site tracking, and they should set a deadline of 1-2 years before it goes into effect. Call it a "sandboxing/isolation" feature (which is what it should be). I think tracking on the site that shows developers what pages a user visits and whatnot, is fine, but I oppose tracking across websites. That's really just another name for mass surveillance. That kind of trackers also introduce all sorts of security issues. Being tracked across domains is really more of a new phenomena on the Web, and Google was one of the first companies to introduce it. And because they just enabled it for everyone by default, we didn't get much time to fight back against it. But I think we can and should fight back against it. Optional ad-blocking in browsers will eventually teach the advertising industry as well as publishers that they better do something about those heavy ads and quickly before everyone starts learning about that setting in their browser, while a default ban on cross-site tracking should hopefully stop the practice altogether. I hope that everyone who wants to implement ad-blocking in their browsers should also allow users to test how the browser performs with ads vs without ads. That feature in Opera is seriously addictive and just another way to encourage publishers to get rid of bad ads.