[arcturus17]

Everyone hates ads, but everyone hates paying for stuff even more.

Installing an ad blocker on desktop is easy, but about 90% of the planet still wouldn’t know how to do it.

Blocking ads on mobile is much harder and that’s where most of web traffic is coming from anyway.

Everyone hates ads, but everyone hates paying for content even more, and they don’t have the technical means to do anything about the ads. See where this is going?

Also, the claim that everyone hates ads is itself questionable. Everyone on HN hates ads, but Karen from Wisconsin or Rajit from Bangalore haven’t even so much as thought about it. They go on with their lives as they visit their favorite websites multiple times per hour, without realizing the atrocious UX and flagrant privacy violations they are being subjected to. Because the sites are free, and they provide value to them, and because they have other things to worry about.

[DoingIsLearning]

> Blocking ads on mobile is much harder and that’s where most of web traffic is coming from anyway.

Most of the developing world (i.e. the market share that is growing) can't afford Apple products. On Android it is absolutely trivial to block adds:

- Firefox + ublock

- Brave

You can argue that these are unknown or have different user experiences compared to Chrome but you cannot argue that "blocking ads on mobile is much harder".

[arcturus17]

I argued for both, but OK, excuse me for the lack of rigor in my wording.

"About half of the US population, and a quarter of the top EU markets have it much harder to block ads on their phones".

Clearly not the same scale as "the rest of the world", but also arguably the ad targets with the deepest pockets.

Regardless, you may easily be able to block ads on your Android today, but you're completely subject to the whims of Google tomorrow.

And the discussion is about the imminent downfall of Google. Oh the irony.