> I don’t care if modern technology gives them a way to do it, I have a right to block or otherwise avoid loading whatever I want. Nobody has any rights whats

> I don’t care if modern technology gives them a way to do it, I have a right to block or otherwise avoid loading whatever I want. Nobody has any rights whatsoever in this context, neither morally nor legally. It's all the law of the jungle, with the interested users perpetually a step ahead of advertisers, and the average user a step behind. > Somehow 20 years ago businesses managed to judge how effective their communications/ads were without tracking; let them go back to that. Well, they really didn't. And now that they've seen how much money they're wasting, it is no longer possible to feign ignorance. But more important is the fact that the user's interests are not the total opposite of these publishers. Mpst companies publishing serious journalism on the internet, for example, barely break even. Any money they earn is directly invested in the product. Now you can obviously tell them to fuck off and they can't really stop you. But that's a collective action problem, like global warming or littering: if everyone follows your lead, everyone (including you) will suffer. Many of the advertising practices of the last decade obviously went too far. But they were created not by collective greed, but panic. I wish we'd come up with a compromise that respects both users and creators.