Yellow Flag (@[email protected])
infosec.exchange
Privacy on the web is fundamentally broken, for at least 90% of the population. Advertising on the web is fundamentally broken, for at least 90% of the population. Yet any attempt to improve this situation is met with fierce resistance by the lucky 10% who know how to navigate their way around the falltraps. Because the internet shouldn’t have tracking! The internet shouldn’t have ads! And any step towards a compromise is a capital offense. I mean, if it slightly benefits the advertisers as well, then it must be evil. It seems that no solution short of eliminating tracking and advertising on the web altogether is going to be accepted. That we live with an ad-supported web and that fact of life cannot be wished away or change overnight – who cares? And every attempt to improve the status quo even marginally inevitably fails. So the horribly broken state we have today prevails. This is so frustrating. I’m just happy I no longer have anything to do with that…

The founder of AdBlock Plus weighs in on PPA:

Privacy on the web is fundamentally broken, for at least 90% of the population. Advertising on the web is fundamentally broken, for at least 90% of the population.

Yet any attempt to improve this situation is met with fierce resistance by the lucky 10% who know how to navigate their way around the falltraps. Because the internet shouldn’t have tracking! The internet shouldn’t have ads! And any step towards a compromise is a capital offense. I mean, if it slightly benefits the advertisers as well, then it must be evil.

It seems that no solution short of eliminating tracking and advertising on the web altogether is going to be accepted. That we live with an ad-supported web and that fact of life cannot be wished away or change overnight – who cares?

And every attempt to improve the status quo even marginally inevitably fails. So the horribly broken state we have today prevails.

This is so frustrating. I’m just happy I no longer have anything to do with that…

  • sugar_in_your_tea
    5·
    4 months ago

    While I also hate ads, what I hate even more is the tracking. I would honestly be okay with ads that respected my privacy, like they largely did back in the early days of the web. I remember visiting sites and having ads that had nothing to do with my interests, probably because they were either randomly or staticly (based on page content) assigned.

    We have the technology, however, to move beyond ads. We can do microtransactions and just pay a nominal fee per page view. I wouldn’t mind if I paid the fraction of a penny a page would’ve g otten by showing me an ad, provided that payment was anonymous (e.g. through something like GNU Taler or Monero). But for some reason, websites either expect a ton of money and a login, or ads, with no in-between. I hoped Brave would provide that, but that didn’t happen at all.

    Please, give us three options:

    1. privacy-respecting ads - ads should be relevant to the page content and maybe local browsing history (never sent anywhere, just analyzed locally)
    2. anonymized microtransactions per page view to avoid ads
    3. subscription to avoid MTX and ads for sites I use regularly

    But if the current options are privacy invasive ads or subscriptions, I’m going to install an ad-blocker. If you prevent me from seeing it, I’m going to look at your competitors instead.