“The ethics of modern web ad-blocking” – by Marco Arment
“The ethics of modern web ad-blocking
(…) Pop-up-blocking software boomed, and within a few years, every modern web browser blocked almost all pop-ups by default.
(…) People often argue that running ad-blocking software is violating an implied contract between the reader and the publisher: the publisher offers the page content to the reader for free, in exchange for the reader seeing the publisher’s ads. And that’s a nice, simple theory, but it’s a blurry line in reality.
(…) Web ads are dramatically different from prior ad media, (…) run arbitrary code on your computer, (…) collect and send data about you and your behavior back to the advertisers and publishers (…) across multiple sites, building a creepily accurate and deep profile of your personal information and private business.
(…) By following any link, you unwittingly opt into whatever the target site, and any number of embedded scripts from other sites and tracking networks, wants to collect, track, analyze, and sell about you.
That’s why the implied-contract theory is invalid: (…)
(…) Web publishers and advertisers cannot be trusted with the amount of access that today’s browsers give them by default, and people are not obligated to permit their web browsers to load all resources or execute all code that they’re given.
(…) This won’t be a clean, easy transition. Blocking pop-ups was much more incisive: it was easy for legitimate publishers to avoid one narrowly-useful Javascript function to open new windows. But it’s completely reasonable for today’s web readers to be so fed up that they disable all ads, or even all Javascript. Web developers and standards bodies couldn’t be more out of touch with this issue, racing ahead to give browsers and Javascript even more capabilities without adequately addressing the fundamental problems that will drive many people to disable huge chunks of their browser’s functionality.
But publishers, advertisers, and browser vendors are all partly responsible for the situation we’re all in. Nobody could blame the users of yesteryear for killing pop-up ad rates, and nobody should blame the users of 2015 for blocking abusive, intrusive, misleading, and privacy-stealing ads and trackers, even if it’s inconvenient for publishers and web developers.
(…) In a few years, after the dust has settled, we’re all going to look back at today’s web’s excesses and abuses as an almost unbelievable embarrassment. Hopefully, the worst is behind us. And it’s time to stop demonizing people who use tools to bring that sanity to their web browsers today.” read full story