@finestructure I'm not talking to stalkers.

It's a bit like burglars complaining about your door lock....

@finestructure I share the sentiment, but I'd make the diff between "ad blocker" and "tracker blocker" though.

i.e. in practice I could be understanding of "either subscribe to support us or browse for free but with ads, bc _we can't work for free_".

But I would never tolerate "either subscribe or _enable cookies to allow us to track you_".

They can still serve you (non personalized) ads to get revenue for their work without needing to track you for it

@finestructure

All they will get out of this is, permanent incognito tabs.

@finestructure

Since I use an iPhone and just enabled whatever privacy setting Apple came out with a few years back now, lots of websites think I have an adblocker. I do not. They are absolutely telling on themselves.

@finestructure The sites that use these banners tend to have the most obtrusive ads that make the site unusable anyway, so I make a point avoid them.

It's not even just the trackers. Ad networks are a security risk. I'm the IT guy for an SMB and when I started this job, I would get calls from people panicked that they had a virus. It was always some scareware popup injected through the ads on the site they were visiting. After I forced uBlock Origin on all of the PCs, those calls stopped.

@finestructure
Yeah, and:

"Prove you're not a robot."

You first!

@finestructure If they want to talk about ad blockers, they should start with why they were necessary.

First, popups that were hard to close, then a big block saying to allow popups, then hijacking ads, then drive by malware.

@finestructure I don't value sites that do these kinds of door slams..

I can get the same info 10 other places online. Don't need to say yes to turning off my ad blocker for anyone.

@finestructure

As I keep saying, sometimes in emails to the websites, I don't run an adblocker. I run a tracker blocker. The fact it blocks ads is purely a result of the unethical method of ad delivery they use.

Put ads on a page delivered by your own servers and I'll see them. Happily, unless it's a 'Punch the monkey' ad…

@finestructure fun fact: you can't subscribe to Slate's ad free offering with Firefox and an adblocker. Had to fire up chromium just to find out that they charge $120 per year. Oh, and of course you only find the price after the trial period in the small print, the prominently displayed price is $15.

Sigh. I like one of their podcasts but was very put off by being marketed to in this way.

@finestructure

Every site wants you to subscribe when all you want is *one* article, which was heavily promoted in various public media.

This is untenable for most people. Especially since you don't know in advance if the article is actually any good or just click bait.

What we need is a universal subscription service, where you can pay to get, say, 100 articles a month pulled from any of hundreds of different services.

@finestructure

This is the website with a law slant? Often, lawyers will refuse to count higher than the numbers one or two. So, they either don't care about Slate's tracking tech or won't publicly acknowledge it in any way.

Turns out that Slate dot com has always been owned or co-opted by idiots. First it was MSN/Microsoft up until 2004 and after that period it was billionaire Jeff Bezos at the WaPo who took control.

Consider the source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_(magazine)