If you’ve been around Irreal for a while, you know that I’ve always been conflicted about ad blockers. On the one hand, I recognize that content providers have to make money some how and that the only reasonably way in today’s Internet is through ads. Because of that, I’ve always said that I’m willing to see ads just as I was in the old days when we consumed content from magazines and newspapers.
My only objection was that the ads had become surveillance mechanisms that would track you wherever you went on the Internet. Enough is enough and I finally declared that I was going to block ads and would stop when the advertisers stopped tracking me. In today’s world, that means never.
Happily, my use of Magic Lasso removed all the trackers and much more besides. As a result, I could still surf the Web and not have to worry about being tracked. I was still waiting for the advertisers to stop tracking so I could turn off the add blocker.
Sadly, I have to upgrade that policy. As I’ve written before, I use Xwidgets to display my Emails and Elfeed entries in HTML. The thing about Xwidgets in Emacs is that it doesn’t run Magic Lasso or any other ad blocker so I get to see what the Web is like without ad blockers.
It’s not pretty. There are multiple popups that cover the content, videos that play—and loudly—without permission and many other affronts to one’s sensibilities. As Cory Doctorow is fond of saying, it’s the enshittificaiton of the Web.
I’m not against sites showing us ads in a way similar to what magazines and newspapers have traditionally done but if you want your ad to pop up and cover the content I’m trying to read or you want to play some video without invitation, I’m going to continue blocking your ads until you stop.