Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Should we gatekeep adblockers? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 months ago by Timely_Jellyfish_2077@programming.dev to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Genuine question as I'm having a dilemma.

I've seen many of my friends using Chrome without any ad blockers. Most of them don't even know that there are things called extensions that can be installed. Whenever I use their laptops, I want to throw them away. I want to tell them about extensions and ad blockers.

But as much as we hate ads, they fuel the internet. Without them, the internet wouldn't be what it is today. If ad blocker users increase, there would be a massive change in the web, and everything may be paywalled.

So should we gatekeep ad blockers and enjoy an ad-free internet as a minority? It's not like they know what they're missing.

I advocate for FOSS, though. I will tell my friends to try Linux and dual-boot it, and suggest alternatives.

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[–] mox@lemmy.sdf.org 24 points 3 months ago

But as much as we hate ads, they fuel the internet. Without them, the internet wouldn’t be what it is today.

Indeed, because of relying on ad revenue, journalism has given way to sensationalist click bait factories, and interesting or unique content is drowned out by invasive and manipulative commercial interests in search results .

If ad blocker users increase, there would be a massive change in the web,

Sounds pretty good to me.