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by genedickson 3764 days ago
There are lots of people working to stop surveillance blockers. I expect that at least some of the HN crowd are employed by sites which are refusing admittance to people with such filters. I stumble on it regularly while surfing around. But I have no sympathy. I regularly harass websites to the effect that if they eliminate the interactive part of advertising the only thing to filter out will be the graphics. Further, the amount of publicity that an established outfit like Wired could have by eliminating interactivity of ads would put them in the news for a while. Any publicist who couldn't put an established site in the top of the news is incompetent. Imagine for instance the New York Times getting rid of their paywall and having just one non interactive ad on each article for unsubscribed folk. Of course they would suffer from being the competition to many of the outfits who might otherwise want to interview various people who were involved, But they would still get major publicity if they had a decent team getting it. It is a talked about thing even by non technical types. The real issue is that the publicity would only last some months, after which they would only be able to trumpet to the effect of we were the first. It could still be a gold mine of publicity, which would bring customers to the site. Of course when people followed links advertisers would still know where they came from, and whether they actually bought anything. I use ghostery and no script. I never turn them off for anybody. All surveillance is bad as far as I am concerned. What would you think if your neighbors gave you shit because you had curtains on your windows? That's how I see it.