[encoderer]

I know this will probably spark nerd-rage, but adblock? C'mon man. Adblock is you, unilaterally reneging on the deal you make when you visit a website.

Suppose they, out of the blue, charge your credit card for your access? You'd be incredulous.

[MartinCron]

It's good to know that I'm not the only person out there who has mixed feelings about adblock.

[awakeasleep]

The fact that online advertisements are actually code that runs on my computer removes the moral qualms, for me. We live in a safe world now, but reading about how intelligence agencies, communist international, and the like operated between the end of WW1 and the cold war really drove home the fact that you do NOT want human beings building a dossier on you, and that fighting for privacy is not a matter of paranoia.

[encoderer]

But you don't care enough to stop visiting the sites themselves? As if the "dossier" can't be built without ad code?

I can't think of any good reason to forcibly separate a website from its ads. Any arguments against the ads are just arguments against the website, and I think attempts to argue otherwise are just trying to have your ad-free cake and eat it too.

Somebody paid and is paying for your visit. For the website itself. It's somebody's labor. If they didn't want ads, they wouldn't have put them there. Clearly you've gone to some length to convince yourself that you're justified in your actions, but you're not. You're taking something for free that the creator intended to be paid for.

[tomflack]

Sites are free to block me from access if they detect I am using adblock, there will be no hard feelings.

[encoderer]

This is a flawed analogy in its magnitude, but not its spirit:

"Stores are free to block me from access if they detect I'm stealing, there will be no hard feelings."

Ok, but it's still wrong to steal, isn't it? Somewhere there's somebody actually paying out of pocket for whatever website you're using.

[tomflack]

The difference is that stores can't preemptively detect I'm going to steal something and bar my entry. Websites can.

As far as I'm concerned anything you send to my web client I can display or choose not to display in any way I want. If you don't like that then do not send it to me - block me. Is it also "theft" if I am blind and use a screen reader?

I also take issue with your use of the word "steal" in the same way people equate piracy to theft it is flawed.

[nitrogen]

Where do you see "I agree to watch your lame ads" between "GET /" and "HTTP/1.1"?

[grecy]

> Adblock is you, unilaterally reneging on the deal you make when you visit a website.

I never made any such deal.

I understand that ads pay for such sites, and that if everyone used adblock such sites would not exist. I am OK with that.