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My gripe with the author's rationalization (which is probably held by many of his peers as well, not to point specifically at him) is that the default of the we

My gripe with the author's rationalization (which is probably held by many of his peers as well, not to point specifically at him) is that the default of the web has become that you must accept ads being thrown in your face to do the most benign browsing activity. a user makes an http request to a domain. the current accepted response is to send back ads and trackers, pillage and extract as much value from that user as possible, immediately. as a user I feel I should be prompted: "this site is funded by ads. by continuing, you agree to the following..." its just a sort of zero permission adulteration of the web - guaranteed ad revenue from a click begets more crap clickbait content and so on. in fact, perhaps ads and tracking mechanisms should be treated by browsers the same as zero click JS malware. no content til the user agrees to have ads delivered to them. i get it, of course prompting a user would create friction and decrease revenue. its the user's machine, data. they are entitled to the optionality of rejecting an HTTP response if it contains unwanted/unwelcome crap.

lolinder 5y ago
The web, even as it is, functions exactly like this. You make a request to a domain, that domain says "here are some trackers". The user's browser then has a choice about whether to load them. My browser (and the browsers of many here) just ignores the request to download scripts that I don't want, because that's what I told it to do and the browser is my agent. The big problem is that most people do not use a browser that is truly their agent--they use a browser that is an agent of an advertising company. The result is entirely predictable: Chrome acts in the best interests of its client, and loads the ads and trackers. If we want to change the status quo with regards to advertising, we don't need to change the technology at all: we have to change the way people see a web browser. We need to help people to make the paradigm shift from "Chrome is how you consume content on the internet" to "a browser is an agent that acts on my behalf in the digital realm".

lolinder 5y ago

The web, even as it is, functions exactly like this. You make a request to a domain, that domain says "here are some trackers". The user's browser then has a choice about whether to load them. My browser (and the browsers of many here) just ignores the request to download scripts that I don't want, because that's what I told it to do and the browser is my agent. The big problem is that most people do not use a browser that is truly their agent--they use a browser that is an agent of an advertising company. The result is entirely predictable: Chrome acts in the best interests of its client, and loads the ads and trackers. If we want to change the status quo with regards to advertising, we don't need to change the technology at all: we have to change the way people see a web browser. We need to help people to make the paradigm shift from "Chrome is how you consume content on the internet" to "a browser is an agent that acts on my behalf in the digital realm".