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I'm not sure this is what very many people would want but I'd rather know ahead of time if a link on my screen goes to a site with tracking based ads or malware
by jasonkostempski 11y ago
I'm not sure this is what very many people would want but I'd rather know ahead of time if a link on my screen goes to a site with tracking based ads or malware and I'd like an indication on the link itself so I can choose to not even click it. I image WSJ would change it's behavior very quickly if it knew a lot of internet users never even see the WSJ name because everything that links to them is blacked out on users screens. As soon as they start just putting in old fashioned natively hosted ads, they can be removed from the list and start appearing on people's screens again. Sure, they don't get to target ads to specific users; they don't get to just drop a script in a page and collect cash; they have to do a bunch of extra work to find advertisers; and there will have to be some trust between content providers and advertisers when it comes to presenting the ads. They already have all these concerns with the print version so they should know how to handle them. They lose their free lunch but they never had an inalienable right to it in the first place. Small shops would have a much harder time getting started as well but I think it would greatly reduce garbage.
I don't really expect everyone to be willing to immediately block themselves from even seeing links to Content Provider X but I think it would benefit all users in the long run if a good chunk of people did it.