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Need we play such language games? It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads. If you asked the average user about their privacy preserving

Need we play such language games? It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads. If you asked the average user about their privacy preserving add-on, or their content blocker they would probably be confused. Yes, obviously I understand the privacy dimensions of advertising, and I realize that this is all in the service of the good guys and against the bad guys, but that shouldn't affect our response to what seems to me to be unnecessary spin.

msla 4y ago
I see it as a good rhetorical move: Say it's ad blocking, and you get people coming in all po-faced about the need for platforms to make money and how horrible it is to have freeloaders blocking honest, legitimate adtech. Frame it as defense of privacy and malware-blocking and those adtech boosters are on the defensive, to the point they probably don't comment at all for fear of drawing attention to the correlation.
- tomComb 4y ago
  > I see it as a good rhetorical move I completely agree: it is a good rhetorical move. aka good spin. But I don't think we should celebrate that sort of thing in tech blog posts, or in any writing actually unless your work in marketing.
dspillett 4y ago
> It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads. I use them, and DNS filters, to block stalking. They just happen to block adverts too because it is practically impossible to separate the two ATM. I'll accept ads based on the page I'm looking at and my rough geographical position, but I don't see why I should put up with being followed and profiled everywhere I go.
- tomComb 4y ago
  Yes, but you are not the typical user, and that is my point. I wasn't denying that cases could be found that would support the language that Mozilla is using.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jbaber 4y ago
  Exactly. I didn't even use adblockers before I had kids and thought about them being tracked. Now I use a pihole and bend myself in knots trying to figure out how to pay sites I visit.
CharlesW 4y ago
> It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads. But crucially, not just ads — they block trackers, known malware source, etc. "Content blockers" encompasses everything that these tools do.
sp332 4y ago
Yes, it's in bold even. If ads give you the ick, then one distinction we’ve made around ad blockers has been especially crucial to privacy-lovers everywhere.
madeofpalk 4y ago
Did we read different articles? > If ads give you the ick, then one distinction we’ve made around ad blockers has been especially crucial to privacy-lovers everywhere.
m-p-3 4y ago
not only ad-blocking for me, but also for automatically stripping superfluous url parameters that are detrimental to privacy when sharing a link.
ndriscoll 4y ago
If there's any spin, it's in characterizing ads as neutral "content". While something like uBlock can block general content, it's primarily a web malware blocker. That includes adware, spyware, crypto miners, etc. It's a necessary security feature preventing the extremely common practice of websites hijacking people's computers to run software they don't approve of.

msla 4y ago

I see it as a good rhetorical move: Say it's ad blocking, and you get people coming in all po-faced about the need for platforms to make money and how horrible it is to have freeloaders blocking honest, legitimate adtech. Frame it as defense of privacy and malware-blocking and those adtech boosters are on the defensive, to the point they probably don't comment at all for fear of drawing attention to the correlation.

tomComb 4y ago
> I see it as a good rhetorical move I completely agree: it is a good rhetorical move. aka good spin. But I don't think we should celebrate that sort of thing in tech blog posts, or in any writing actually unless your work in marketing.

dspillett 4y ago

> It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads. I use them, and DNS filters, to block stalking. They just happen to block adverts too because it is practically impossible to separate the two ATM. I'll accept ads based on the page I'm looking at and my rough geographical position, but I don't see why I should put up with being followed and profiled everywhere I go.

tomComb 4y ago
Yes, but you are not the typical user, and that is my point. I wasn't denying that cases could be found that would support the language that Mozilla is using.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jbaber 4y ago
Exactly. I didn't even use adblockers before I had kids and thought about them being tracked. Now I use a pihole and bend myself in knots trying to figure out how to pay sites I visit.

CharlesW 4y ago

> It's "ad blocking". People use those extensions to block ads. But crucially, not just ads — they block trackers, known malware source, etc. "Content blockers" encompasses everything that these tools do.

sp332 4y ago

Yes, it's in bold even. If ads give you the ick, then one distinction we’ve made around ad blockers has been especially crucial to privacy-lovers everywhere.

madeofpalk 4y ago

Did we read different articles? > If ads give you the ick, then one distinction we’ve made around ad blockers has been especially crucial to privacy-lovers everywhere.

m-p-3 4y ago

not only ad-blocking for me, but also for automatically stripping superfluous url parameters that are detrimental to privacy when sharing a link.

ndriscoll 4y ago

If there's any spin, it's in characterizing ads as neutral "content". While something like uBlock can block general content, it's primarily a web malware blocker. That includes adware, spyware, crypto miners, etc. It's a necessary security feature preventing the extremely common practice of websites hijacking people's computers to run software they don't approve of.