| > Anything that is moving, distracting This. It's really hard to stay focused on an article or piece of text longer than a few sentences with flickering images, autoplaying videos (with sound), and recently those pesky javascript overlay popups. Blocking ads doesn't just make for a faster web experience, it also allows you to have proper attention spans necessary to read and digest two pages of text, and that's true for any kind of audience, tech-savvy or not. Obviously, privacy invasion, constant and pervasive tracking, malware distribution, profiling and exploitation of personal data in jurisdictions with poor consumer protection laws and over which you have no control or say are all alarming and dangerous. When people started raising concerns and calling this out a few years back, ad networks (and the tech industry they are living on) came forward with DNT, "voluntary opt outs", privacy policies and "personalized contents and ads". Most people would probably agree that all these options are equally laughable as they merely try to appease concerns rather than addressing them. Regardless of my personal opinion, is it really surprising to see people of all kinds start using tools making their experience better? For most people, the web is merely a medium, just like paper books. |