[harryovers]

People who support ad-blockers and support net neutrality don't seem to see the hypocrisy in their stance. If all net traffic should be treated equal then shouldn't advertising net traffic be treated with the same equality as content net traffic and not blocked by some software running somewhere on that network (even if it is running at your end of the network).

[npkarnik]

I don't buy the hypocrisy. Net neutrality requires ISP infrastructure companies to not artificially restrict end-users choice for legal content. Especially as ISP companies become coupled with content companies (Comcast/NBC Universal) and generate anti-trust concerns regarding throttling their competitors in the content vertical.

An end-user running an ad-blocker has literally nothing to do with the appropriate role of the infrastructure provider (which many argue should be an unbiased plumbing system).

I do think there are some ethical concerns for running an ad-blocker, but I don't think this is one of them.

[harryovers]

Net neutrality is about all net traffic being treated equally. It is not just about the ISPs throttling what they want. Ad blockers do not treat all network traffic equally, they will block it if they think it is anything to do with an advertising company.

[PeterisP]

Net neutrality is about third parties treating all net traffic equally.

I am not treating all net traffic equally, I'm not visiting at least 99.99% of global websites - and that is perfectly consistent with net neutrality.

In that sense, an ad blocking or extra-ad-adding service that is implemented against my wishes by any third party (no matter if it's ISP, software vendor or someone who hacked my computer) violates that neutrality, but the exact same ad blocking or ad adding done by me or the content provider is acceptable.

[npkarnik]

Every source I've read disagrees with your interpretation. Net neutrality is about common carrier rules and definitely relates to how ISPs and Governments handle traffic.

Here's an article by Tim Wu, who coined the term explaining that he is specifically talking about public network neutrality and common carrier laws: http://www.timwu.org/network_neutrality.html

Also, https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality

[kstrauser]

It's hard to reply without sarcasm, but I'll try.

I 100% support the right of advertisers' content to be handled with the same diligence and priority as any other source on the Internet, without blocking or throttling at the ISP layer.

I 100% support my right to choose, filter, and select what legally-entitled content I download from the Internet, using whatever mechanism I see fit. If a page redirects me to a freely distributable copy of "Pixels", I'm not going to use my network resources to fetch it just because I can. That content doesn't interest me and I don't want it. Well, same with invasive advertising: I wish not to use my paid network resources to download it.

Your statement is the equivalent of "how can you support telephone companies acting as common carriers, but still think it's OK to hang up on telemarketers?" It's a non-sequitur.

[LesZedCB]

I'm not saying they can't serve it up. I'm saying I don't want to see it. I don't have control over the pipes as a last-mile provider, and if I did, I would let ad traffic through without being throttled. By that logic, running a firewall that blocks incoming ssh login requests from Asia should be a cognitive dissonance for us. I promise you it isn't.