[PartiallyTyped]

Ads are speech until they are intrusive, until they track you across websites, until they violate your privacy.

It's one thing to have a block of HTML dedicated to ads, and another to have YOUR shit running on my machine WITHOUT my consent.

[tt24]

It is with your consent.

You continue to visit these websites.

If you don’t want their code running on your machine, simply don’t send a GET request.

[ericjmorey]

If I buy a book, I'm not required to read any part of it. I'm allowed to control what I read.

[tt24]

You’re allowed to use an adblocker.

[autoexec]

You might be safe as long as the ad is on a website but stupid laws that shouldn't exist like the DMCA can make it illegal to block ads when you have to circumvent a technological measure in order to block those ads. Blocking ads and the steps needed to block them might also violate some product's EULA which could result in civil judgements against you.

[tt24]

> DMCA can make it illegal to block ads when you have to circumvent a technological measure in order to block those ads. Blocking ads and the steps needed to block them might also violate some product's EULA which could result in civil judgements against you.

Your issue there is with the government. No disagreement from me in this regard :)

[autoexec]

The problem of course isn't the fact that government and laws exist. Most of us are happy that we have government and laws. The alternative is very ugly and doesn't lend itself to progress or prosperity.

The problem is that our government was allowed to be bribed/corrupted by corporate interests to pass bad laws designed to protect their profits and enforce control by taking freedom from consumers. The true villain here isn't government, government was just the tool they leveraged against us.

It's supposed to be our job to insist that our government work for the interests of "we the people" and we failed. The solution now is to get rid of corrupt politicians and the bad laws they passed and replace them with good ones that preserve our freedoms and don't put corporate interest ahead of the people's.

Sadly, our entire political system has been carefully refined over centuries to make it harder and harder to keep our government accountable to the people but hopefully it's not too late to change that situation within the democratic framework we've created.

[PartiallyTyped]

That is a very weak argument. I don't have any way to decline seeing the ads before I do. I can't disable tracking by disabling js because, like a parasite, tracking software has uses what is necessary technology for websites to function.

[tt24]

Sounds like to you the use of the internet is worth the risk of being tracked.

[maest]

I assume you forgot the /s.

Otherwise this is a very weak argument. Using the Internet is approximately mandatory in our current society. "Don't use the Internet" is not useful advice.

[tt24]

Sounds like the risk of seeing an advertisement is probably worth the benefit of using the internet then.

[maest]

It's not an "either/or", as you seem to keep implying.

[tt24]

Yeah it is

Infrastructure and content isn’t free. Either you pay for it by watching ads or you don’t get it at all.

[maest]

You can pay with money.