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You'll notice that the essay doesn't build its argument around "ads bad" or "privacy good" or any of the typical shibboleths. It builds its argument around cra

• paulcole 6y ago
  Yes but personally my enjoyment of ads outweighs things I don’t care about at all.
• quadrangle 6y ago
  Yes, but the "ads bad" arguments hold up to scrutiny as well, even though it's not what this site focused on.
  • saagarjha 6y ago
    It's an easier argument to reply to with "you're stealing the website's livelihood", which is why it's usually worth bringing up after you explain the many other problems ads have.
    • quadrangle 6y ago
      Yes, I'm not denying the significance of tact. But just because it may be tactfully or politically harder in some cases to focus on "ads bad", that doesn't make it wrong. And how to fund creative work is indeed a complex question. However, "I won't support business model that is itself harmful" is a perfectly fair position. I can both want a website to get funded and also refuse to play along with funding it through third-party ads which are harmful even without the worst problems of deception and tacking etc. In short, I think it's really important that we not forget that ads-bad is basically true and has been since at least the old penny-papers and yellow-journalism. See for one good source Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants. A good intro is episode 16 at https://humanetech.com/podcast/ https://humanetech.com/podcast/