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I'd be fine to see nonintrusive ads, but some people (see: Google, and the ABP dev they pay bribes to) think 'nonintrusive' means 'text only' when I say 'text o

I'd be fine to see nonintrusive ads, but some people (see: Google, and the ABP dev they pay bribes to) think 'nonintrusive' means 'text only' when I say 'text only, and doesn't track you'. I'm fine seeing text ads based on page keywords or purchased for a specific site/site category, but not based on google/whoever else spying on browsing history. That's why I ditched Adblock Plus for Adblock Edge. As it is, I whitelist a few sites, but the list is relatively small simple because AdSense is the furthest thing imaginable from 'nonintrusive'. Yes, flash/audio/popup ads are more intrusive in a purely sense aspect, but tracking of users is just as intrusive overall.

ds9 13y ago
Exactly, thank you for posting that. The "modest proposal" assumes the problem is only "seeing ads", but has nothing to offer someone who objects to being tracked across the web. And I just want to point out, this refutes, not just the ad proposal, but the whole micropayment scheme: you can't have micropayments allocated according to the user's behavior without snarfing the user's whole browsing trail. Well here's another "modest proposal" for web advertising, which solves both problems: Site owners accept only static ads and hosts them on the site domain; users are not tracked and not annoyed by animations, noise or Flash. Then the ethical argument finally works. Ad networks would resist, but if the blocking is enough of a problem they'll have to settle for it.
- nicolaskruchten 13y ago
  That's a very good point, and not one which my proposal addresses at all: in order to do what I suggest, your browser still needs to communicate with various ad exchanges.