| Before the web, people changed channels or got up during TV commercials, Many people still don't realize it's trivial to have a DVR automatically skip commercials, but advertising companies and TV networks sued TiVo to make sure they will never implement it. Modern web ads and trackers are far over the line for many people today, Not just "over the line," but for over 5 years now, advertising networks have allowed exploits to be delivered over their advertising networks. There's nothing like browsing a website then having a drive-by crypto locker installed on your machine. As of 2015, blocking advertising isn't a moral question, it's a question of do you value your own security. But publishers, advertisers, and browser vendors are all partly responsible for the situation we’re all in. People say "trust the wisdom of the free market," but they forget the important part: free markets always become corrupt and always accumulate power towards the top. A market without government oversight and intervention is just a way to exploit and abuse people for profit with no repercussions. It has never been easier to collect small direct payments online, That's more tricky, isn't it? We've all viewed some article at a tiny city's online newspaper then been hit with a "SUBSCRIBE TO PODUNK DAILY ONLINE TO KEEP READING, ONLY $24.99/month." It's not sustainable for every small thing to receive direct payments and we don't have a clean disaggregation of a common "subscribe to internet publicans" pool (like iTunes Match, but for writing? Still useless if you get 0.00002 cents per page view—but, that's basically online advertising again). |