Doug [he/him]

A worthwhile thing to keep in mind whether it’s for tea, supplements, or whatever, is that medication is based on things that were observed from “natural” sources.

For example, willow bark was/is/has been used for pain and inflammation. It also contains salicin which is similar to acetysalicylic acid, which you’ll know better as aspirin.

Does that mean all the things people say do a thing work? Not at all. Do some of them have varying degrees of effect of some percentage of people? Yes.

I suspect something else is going on there. I made that switch years ago and haven’t found a site that doesn’t play nice with Firefox in that time.

prosthetics and bionics are taking leaps and bounds

Heh

I think you’re wrong on the overwhelming majority and that they’ll still be fine with it should it happen.

Good luck I guess

And if a home invader with commercially available arms so decided it’s the end of your family. That’s how scale works.

But you don’t give in to a bully to avoid violence. That’s how you get more people/countries bullied.

This is not intended as a threat of violence. This is an analogy to make a point that should be obvious

My quote, not theirs. Also Russia is a bully. Similar to the kind that takes lunch money, but on a much larger scale

Except it’s less likely to be donation based and more likely to be fee based.

The fact that you’re aware of any kind of ad blocking for Netscape reinforces my position that blocking was a leader in the arms race

Not more powerful, just more willing to do whatever to get what they want.

If good people always lose then why do we still have good people? Why do good acts still occur?

You’ve got an important word there. Scale.

Countries aren’t people but they’re made up of them. It wouldn’t take nuclear weapons to annihilate your household.

Russia has invaded Ukraine’s home and tried to lay claim. Now you’re suggesting they give up what was taken from them to satisfy your desire for peace.

The analogy the other person used is fair. In another analogy Russia is nothing more than a bully. We’ve long moved past the time where the advice we give is to just give the bully your money so they don’t beat you up and take it anyway.

And nothing of value was lost I guess

There were no adblocking extensions for early internet explorer so consider its share 0.

What you consider it to be is irrelevant. An extension wasn’t any more the only way to block ads then than it is now. Ad blocking has absolutely been happening longer than there have been extensions to do it.

Adblocking increased at twice the rate of new internet users

Which means it’s going to reach a critical mass at some point, no? What would you expect to happen then?

very obviously trolling or roleplaying

Damn am I sick of people falling on this regardless of what the disagreement is over or who it is with. Even if it were true, which it’s not, you have a better picture of the situation, at least if you’re willing to accept that someone legitimately disagrees with you.

I’m sorry to hear about your food

There’s something perversely amusing, given the conversation, how you seem to expect me to answer your question without seemingly being willing to answer mine.

I’ll answer, but not until you’ve extended the courtesy of doing so yourself with the questions you’ve already been asked.

I don’t know but if I did I might buy it

And I get the impression you weren’t around for the first ad blockers. I recall it very differently and unless you have something to back up your end of it we’re at a bit of an impasse.

I’ve been around far longer than you think.

It absolutely has bearing. It’s directly related to how we consider our fellow humans.

It’s also not simply a question of more money. It can absolutely be a question of any money.

Is it ethical to consume a product or service put out for sale, in one method or another, to the public without paying for it?

If a local farmer sells eggs at a farmer’s market would you take one and eat it? Why or why not? Does the number of eggs he has for sale change your answer? What if others are also doing so? You did say there’s nothing wrong with trying to get everything for free before, didn’t you?

auto ad skipping has been a feature since at least 2002

And do you recall when the obnoxious banners and pop ups during shows started to happen with regularity?

any clearly separate banner, pop up, intermediate page etc placed around the main content

Given the above, what factors would you figure contributed to the decline of that type of ad?

I can block a banner ad

Precisely

As far as I am concerned content online is easily replaceable

I bet the people who hunted animals to extinction thought the same. At some point it stops being worth the effort to make another.

No matter what you or I do, web content will survive

See my previous statement about animal extinction

the market will evolve new ways to separate us from our money

And another like you will complain about it, block it, and the cycle continues while the masses complain about how it wasn’t this bad before without an ounce of consideration to their own part in the whole thing. Wanna guess how I know?

As a question, how do you feel about data mining and tracking?

This whole paragraph looks like it’s supposed to be some kind of gotcha. It’s not. I’ve made it very clear from the start what I’m against is blocking all ads. By all means block the ones that are legitimately malicious. But I remember when the blocker in the post announced they’d be allowing non-malicious ads, which met certain published criteria, to go through the blocking. Ublock was the new darling pretty much overnight.

I do block various ads and trackers. I do not blanket block everything that could be considered an ad.

You think no one has ever had to spend time and money dealing with a picked pocket or a pothole on a road they drive every day? It’s not always as easy as you make it sound. Just like a lot of times you run an antivirus and it takes care of everything. Not always but sometimes your whole identity is stolen and it can be years later and you’re still dealing with problems. Guess you shouldn’t have gone to the gas station you always go to.

Why would sites go back to stock banner ads when they’re so easily blocked. Why do you think they stopped? The same culture you’re now defending pushed them out. Now it’s an arms race with stronger measures on both sides all the time.

You lose nothing by blocking ads today. At some point the bill comes due and either you can’t block them so easily or you lose access to the content you want to see. You’re pulling pebbles away from a levee and telling everyone it’s safe because nothing has happened.

It’s not a matter of locked vs unlocked. It’s a matter of payment.

A website also isn’t really a product. When you go to a store you see the things they want you to see. If you go to a restaurant you’re greeted in the way they choose to greet you and are exposed to how they choose to decorate.

But at the core someone has to pay the bills. If you buy a product you pay for it. If you visit a website that serves ads instead of charging that’s what pays those bills. If you’re refusing to even see them you’re handing that cost to someone else

So it’s only a possibility for millionaires to serve ads and get paid from them? Someone should alert the podcasters and independent app developers.

It’s your moral responsibility to “subsidize income” when you’re consuming the content someone created in order to afford to live, no?

I’m with you, that’s the world I want to create and live in along side with everyone else. That’s not the world we live in today and a whole lot of people need to be able to survive before we can get to that point.

A whole lot of people seem to think I’m out here trying to encourage everyone to give up their time and bandwidth to donate to the rich. Not at all. But the idea that they’re the only ones who might be getting any money from ads is absurd.

Interestingly enough the library is possibly the analogy I needed. It’s funded by your taxes. Tiny little amounts that won’t make a difference to you at all but it’s still there. I would absolutely object to someone looking through everything I checked out on my way out the door (trackers) as well as salesmen lurking around the whole place (obtrusive ads). I don’t mind them setting up displays or flyers on community boards (unobtrusive ads) or late fees (payments). It’s also great that the writers and publishers (creators and hosts) are still getting paid since the library still bought the books. It may be tiny amounts per reader, but so are ads.

On the other hand I’m pretty sure most people agree that if you spend the day in a local coffee house using their free Wi-Fi and not buying anything that you’d be an asshole and it would be reasonable for them to kick you out.

In the same way your TV does, sure.

It becomes your problem when the thing you want to see is not available because it shut down.

Whether or not they can make money on traditional advertising is a complex thing when I’m not sure what you mean by traditional advertising. Can a website offer traditional advertising? If so how do you think the existence of ad blockers has contributed to its decline? I remember when TiVo was a big thing we started seeing banners at the bottom of shows advertising other shows. Seems like a pretty clear correlation to me.

And they didn’t sign a contract and are under no obligation to serve you content. That road goes both ways. Is a contractual obligation the only way you deal with something you don’t like to get to something you do?