Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible
Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible
In recent news, Google has put forth a proposal known as the "Web Environment Integrity Explainer", authored by four of its engineers. On the surface, it
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I find it disturbing that there are people out there who spend much of their time thinking about new ways to get people to see adverts. Surely it falls under the "bullshit jobs" category that David Graeber once wrote about.
It's not just that there are people thinking about it, it's that this is what our brightest minds in our society are incentivized to think about.
There is a joke in tech circles - if you are smart enough you eventually end up in ad tech. It's really unhealthy for our society.
A lot of ads should be banned for environmental reasons alone. From junk mail, lit up signs, eyesore billboards, and all the power wasted in digital ads.
The big reasons I'm against this is all the side effects. Yes, there will be more ads, but there will also be:
- More autoplaying videos on article websites
- Increased risk of malware from ads
- Decreased competition in the browser space
- Decreased competition in the OS space
- More tracking and data harvesting
I hate shitty ads as much as the next person, but you're ignoring how much of the internet runs on advertising money. Think of all the websites, services, apps, etc that you use that are "free" (read: ad-supported) — without ad revenue, a large percentage of them would be too expensive to run.
I'm not saying ad-tech companies/people are always good, many of them clearly do unethical shit, but the idea that you're being forced to see ads is kind of crazy. You always have the option to not use ad-supported stuff, it's just a lot more limiting and expensive.