HN vastly over estimates adblocker usage, yes. But also if adblocker usage was completely trivial and could be completely ignored, then Google would not be wast

HN vastly over estimates adblocker usage, yes. But also if adblocker usage was completely trivial and could be completely ignored, then Google would not be wasting resources trying to shut it down on sites like Youtube. I don't think this is going to create a large change in browser stats, but I'm also not sure anything short of antitrust is going to create a large change in browser stats. The pickings are very slim for issues that are worth campaigning on to change general user behavior, and adblocking might as well be one of the ones we use, because while it's a minuscule percentage at least it's not nothing. It's at least a large enough percentage for Google to care about targeting it. And at the very least, adblocking is an easier issue to campaign on for user rights than privacy or abstract notions like software freedom are. We shouldn't be so quick to throw away talking points around one of the very few user rights where exercising that right has an obvious benefit and doesn't just make the user's life more complicated or difficult in the short term. I am not going to get many people to switch to Firefox over an adblocker. But I'll get more people to switch for adblocking than I would by telling them to care about privacy or web ecosystem health.