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Sigh, can't wait for someone to break it. Same way secure enclaves and anti-crack tools always are. What an awful product, I can feel my food coming back up whe

Sigh, can't wait for someone to break it. Same way secure enclaves and anti-crack tools always are. What an awful product, I can feel my food coming back up when reading manipulative garbage like: > In 2025, the popularity of ad blockers, VPNs, and privacy browsers continues to grow and disrupt how websites and web apps operate. Is a bit like saying "We are proud to present the performance collars 2.0. Many mining operations are increasingly affected by employees managing to break free of their performance collars, especially younger employees below the age of 12. With the new and improved performance collars 2.0 you can improve site productivity by 15-50% depending on your employee demographics." Building tools to give the more powerful parties in an interaction, i.e. corporations even more power against users sucks, and speaks of an utter lack of moral character. And before anyone comments, saying, no no analytics are good for users and the benevolent companies with great track records will use this power for good, go and read [1], a small excerp: > There's plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It's a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination. Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/ https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/

nikitaeverywher 1y ago
"Performance collars 2.0" is an oversaturated comparison. If you feel enslaved to the system when you sit and cherry-pick what every website gets from you (instead of, to simplify, just opening an incognito tab), that's your choice. In reality, nothing really changes for you personally — except that good feeling of going against the system and saving a bit of bandwidth on blocked requests. I’ve explained in other threads that some basic data is inevitably collected server-side, and network filters just make it feel like you're outsmarting the system — trying to change how physics works while withholding website data like "how long did you keep your tabs open", for instance. In contrast, what actually makes me "feel my food coming back up" is the fact that some privacy browsers advertise how they block (for instance) YouTube ads. On one hand, I think: "Well deserved, YouTube – your UX with 1-minute unskippable ads is more than terrible." On the other – what a piracy leader move. Reminds me of the 2000s when I was buying game disks with cracks that cost almost the same as legit ones. Anyways, this market has to exist and be used – it's a law of nature and I have nothing against it to be honest. One day, maybe, we’ll release a new kind of privacy browser or similar product – just not one that strips a web app down to its bare, minimal functionality like plucking a chicken. On subscriptions: If someone doesn't want to pay a subscription (for a car), they'd probably just buy another car. We live in an open market. If a fraction of people hates subscriptions, there'll always be alternatives. Same with the cited article: Chrome dominates, but if they kill off extensions like ad blockers (which BTW work fine even now with Manifest V3 etc), they'll lose a chunk of market share to competitors. It's an open market, and most people choose Chrome today — because it's just a good browser. Numbers say it, not me. Software businesses chose subscription models for a reason – mostly predictive budgeting. Sure, there are cases when subscriptions feel super-odd (like warming up a car seat), bad monetization design. There are also "lifetime subscription" examples. Too broad to dive into here. I will just conclude that if subscriptions are everywhere, there's a reason for it. Denial or Anger it is normal (as per Five Stages of Grief).
- Voultapher 1y ago
  I feel like you are being willfully obtuse. I'll counter a couple of points that hold up your arguments. > and network filters just make it feel like you're outsmarting the system — trying to change how physics works while withholding website data like "how long did you keep your tabs open", for instance. There is plenty of creepy tracking going on that goes much further than that and has demonstrably been used to for example advertise to gambling addicts, insecure teenage girls, easily scam-able elderly people and more. The blockers have proven to help in that regard. The websites in question work perfectly fine without that information, they need that information the same way I need you to wire me 10k. > In contrast, what actually makes me "feel my food coming back up" is the fact that some privacy browsers advertise how they block (for instance) YouTube ads. Tricky topic and I feel the way they seek to profit off of blocking ads is somewhat scammy. But the underlying issue that Google and co. have made the internet progressively unbearable without an adblocker remains. Sometimes when faced with greedy and immoral behavior, the answer isn't to simply accept it lying down. > which BTW work fine even now with Manifest V3 etc No they don't. Filter list update rate is now tied to how often Google approves extension updates, that gives them a significant leg up. > We live in an open market. LOL no we don't. Big-Tech uses IP law, specifically DMCA 1201 to block competitors from interoperating with their services and try their best to buy and destroy any kind of competition. They have all been convicted by the FCC of monopolistic actions. The same players like Microsoft and Apple that reverse engineered the for example document formats of their competitors and engaged in adversarial compatibility, while now strictly blocking it as best as they can. Let's look at how the famous Apple boys got started: > A blue box is an electronic device that produces tones used to generate the in-band signaling tones formerly used within the North American long-distance telephone network to send line status and called number information over voice circuits. During that period, charges associated with long-distance calling were commonplace and could be significant, depending on the time, duration and destination of the call. A blue box device allowed for circumventing these charges by enabling an illicit user, referred to as a "phreaker", to place long-distance calls, without using the network's user facilities, that would be billed to another number or dismissed entirely by the telecom company's billing system as an incomplete call. A number of similar "color boxes" were also created to control other aspects of the phone network. [...] Blue box designed and built by Steve Wozniak and sold by Steve Jobs before they founded Apple. > If a fraction of people hates subscriptions, there'll always be alternatives. Not if the monopolistic players have a say in it. Take Adobe for example. They don't want any competition to their service and recently tried to buy Figma. > Software businesses chose subscription models for a reason [...] I will just conclude that if subscriptions are everywhere, there's a reason for it. Yes, greed and a lack of regulation. Slavery was a very popular thing for thousands of years, your reasoning could be applied to say it was everywhere so there's a reason for it. Paying employees no money vs paying them money is often cheaper .. doesn't mean it's ok and right. We are talking about moral and regulatory questions here, behavior existing does not imply anything about it's morality.

nikitaeverywher 1y ago

"Performance collars 2.0" is an oversaturated comparison. If you feel enslaved to the system when you sit and cherry-pick what every website gets from you (instead of, to simplify, just opening an incognito tab), that's your choice. In reality, nothing really changes for you personally — except that good feeling of going against the system and saving a bit of bandwidth on blocked requests. I’ve explained in other threads that some basic data is inevitably collected server-side, and network filters just make it feel like you're outsmarting the system — trying to change how physics works while withholding website data like "how long did you keep your tabs open", for instance. In contrast, what actually makes me "feel my food coming back up" is the fact that some privacy browsers advertise how they block (for instance) YouTube ads. On one hand, I think: "Well deserved, YouTube – your UX with 1-minute unskippable ads is more than terrible." On the other – what a piracy leader move. Reminds me of the 2000s when I was buying game disks with cracks that cost almost the same as legit ones. Anyways, this market has to exist and be used – it's a law of nature and I have nothing against it to be honest. One day, maybe, we’ll release a new kind of privacy browser or similar product – just not one that strips a web app down to its bare, minimal functionality like plucking a chicken. On subscriptions: If someone doesn't want to pay a subscription (for a car), they'd probably just buy another car. We live in an open market. If a fraction of people hates subscriptions, there'll always be alternatives. Same with the cited article: Chrome dominates, but if they kill off extensions like ad blockers (which BTW work fine even now with Manifest V3 etc), they'll lose a chunk of market share to competitors. It's an open market, and most people choose Chrome today — because it's just a good browser. Numbers say it, not me. Software businesses chose subscription models for a reason – mostly predictive budgeting. Sure, there are cases when subscriptions feel super-odd (like warming up a car seat), bad monetization design. There are also "lifetime subscription" examples. Too broad to dive into here. I will just conclude that if subscriptions are everywhere, there's a reason for it. Denial or Anger it is normal (as per Five Stages of Grief).

Voultapher 1y ago
I feel like you are being willfully obtuse. I'll counter a couple of points that hold up your arguments. > and network filters just make it feel like you're outsmarting the system — trying to change how physics works while withholding website data like "how long did you keep your tabs open", for instance. There is plenty of creepy tracking going on that goes much further than that and has demonstrably been used to for example advertise to gambling addicts, insecure teenage girls, easily scam-able elderly people and more. The blockers have proven to help in that regard. The websites in question work perfectly fine without that information, they need that information the same way I need you to wire me 10k. > In contrast, what actually makes me "feel my food coming back up" is the fact that some privacy browsers advertise how they block (for instance) YouTube ads. Tricky topic and I feel the way they seek to profit off of blocking ads is somewhat scammy. But the underlying issue that Google and co. have made the internet progressively unbearable without an adblocker remains. Sometimes when faced with greedy and immoral behavior, the answer isn't to simply accept it lying down. > which BTW work fine even now with Manifest V3 etc No they don't. Filter list update rate is now tied to how often Google approves extension updates, that gives them a significant leg up. > We live in an open market. LOL no we don't. Big-Tech uses IP law, specifically DMCA 1201 to block competitors from interoperating with their services and try their best to buy and destroy any kind of competition. They have all been convicted by the FCC of monopolistic actions. The same players like Microsoft and Apple that reverse engineered the for example document formats of their competitors and engaged in adversarial compatibility, while now strictly blocking it as best as they can. Let's look at how the famous Apple boys got started: > A blue box is an electronic device that produces tones used to generate the in-band signaling tones formerly used within the North American long-distance telephone network to send line status and called number information over voice circuits. During that period, charges associated with long-distance calling were commonplace and could be significant, depending on the time, duration and destination of the call. A blue box device allowed for circumventing these charges by enabling an illicit user, referred to as a "phreaker", to place long-distance calls, without using the network's user facilities, that would be billed to another number or dismissed entirely by the telecom company's billing system as an incomplete call. A number of similar "color boxes" were also created to control other aspects of the phone network. [...] Blue box designed and built by Steve Wozniak and sold by Steve Jobs before they founded Apple. > If a fraction of people hates subscriptions, there'll always be alternatives. Not if the monopolistic players have a say in it. Take Adobe for example. They don't want any competition to their service and recently tried to buy Figma. > Software businesses chose subscription models for a reason [...] I will just conclude that if subscriptions are everywhere, there's a reason for it. Yes, greed and a lack of regulation. Slavery was a very popular thing for thousands of years, your reasoning could be applied to say it was everywhere so there's a reason for it. Paying employees no money vs paying them money is often cheaper .. doesn't mean it's ok and right. We are talking about moral and regulatory questions here, behavior existing does not imply anything about it's morality.