this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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The story of internet ads is a classic greed to ruins fable. People put up with static picture and text ads for a very long time, and many, myself included, still don't mind them. In fact, self-hosting picture and text ads is almost guaranteed to get through adblockers.
But then the ads started moving. They started playing sound. They started executing code and phoning home to third party servers and collecting user data without consent. They started consuming more system resources than the webpage itself. Malware started being distributed through it, and there was even a recent breakthrough of ad cryptominers, because, again, they literally execute arbitrary code on your computer!
At this point our trust in ads are irreversibly broken. We will never tolerate ads again like we did when they hadn't done all this, even if they promises to clean up their act. Adblock was developed as not just something to remove unsightly ads, but also, and I do not exaggerate when I say this, as a line of defense for the security and usability of your computer. It's like an antivirus, but it kicks in before the virus even reaches your computer! For this reason, I think adblockers are not only okay to have, but essentially a mandatory item for browsing today's internet. If you want revenue in spite of that, maybe set up a tip jar and/or go back to self-hosted text and picture ads, I'm not disabling adblock and opening myself to harm because, no offense, I genuinely do not trust you.
Anyone who was around from the beginnings of the Internet will remember the evolution of ads from basic hyperlinks, to static images, to the period when ad companies realized they could abuse Adobe Flash to serve up the most obnoxious ads possible to try and grab peoples' attention, while at the same time in some cases attempting to exploit peoples' browsers to be even more obnoxious, run arbitrary code, or track users aggressively.
No one should feel bad about blocking ads. The people pushing them brought it upon themselves by ramping the annoyance factor up and up and up. Back in the day between the endless pop-ups and Flash ads, the web was barely usable without a good adblocker.
Ads continue to be intrusive to this day, with companies trying all kinds of weird and wonderful ways of tracking you across the web to learn what sites you visit and what you search for. Blocking them is a necessity for anyone conscious of their privacy and security online.
For the same reason popup blockers became a thing. Who doesn't remember the hundreds of windows that would open. Thousands of dialog boxes which would prevent you from closing the windows and so on.
I have zero sympathy for ads. They messed up bad and there is no way to recover or regain any trust.