> If your time is so important why are you wasting it visiting pages with ads?

Because I get linked to them. Also, social objects - other people are visiting those pages, so I have to check them out too in order to participate in the conversation.

Also, YouTube.

> Surely you'd just stick with the better content that doesn't use ads all the time right?

Yeah, and I mostly do.

>social objects - other people are visiting those pages, so I have to check them out too in order to participate in the conversation.

So maybe that's the cost of not seeing ads, you don't get to participate in conversations.

It's like if Stallman would, instead of making GNU, hack into MS and put the source online because he "just has to".

Most of the time, taking a moral stand requires sacrifice.

You seem to imply there is something questionable about blocking ads. The cost of not seeing ads is the time I spend setting up and configuring the ad-blocker. It's a lower cost than the attention spent on ads, so I block them.

Your analogy doesn't work, because this is about ownership. I own my machine, so I get to decide what will run and how.

"The cost of not seeing ads is the time I spend setting up and configuring the ad-blocker." - there is also the externalised cost that the sites which rely on ads will eventually go bust if everyone does the same thing as you do. Given the current state of things, you are defecting on a massive Prisoners' Dilemma.

That's not a cost, that's a benefit. There's not one ad-supported site I care about that I wouldn't be willing to donate to. And I'd be ecstatic if Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/BuzzFeed/etc. went out of business.

It can be argued that those sites going bust is actually a good thing. So the payoff matrix favors ad blocking both short and long-term.

if you dont have money for a site, you can't have one, that is the universal law of life, i would like to have a alienware, but i can't afford it, i don't go spamming people around....

>Your analogy doesn't work, because this is about ownership. I own my machine, so I get to decide what will run and how.

You own your machine but not the text. Right now it's still somewhat hypothetical, but what would be your opinion if the major websites would put a T&C that you have to enable (Let's say it was safe JS) ads to view content. Would you still say "it's my machine and I view what I want when I want"?

How are adblock-blockers (which are counterbalanced by adblock-blockers-blockers by adblockers) different?

> You own your machine but not the text.

You don't get to own the text just because you can read it, see if you read this - it is still my text (because I wrote it!).

>what would be your opinion if the major websites would put a T&C that you have to enable (Let's say it was safe JS) ads to view content.

And how would I know it's safe? I don't even let the closest friends on the wifi because they don't run adblockers on their phone and I don't want my router to get pwned [1] just because someone like Forbes is making a buck using Ads.

> Would you still say "it's my machine and I view what I want when I want"?

It is still my machine, so long as I physically own it. If I run a virtual machine in the cloud it's not mine you see, because then I'm just renting it. If ad networks want to remove the ability to block ads they would have to own the machines and rent out those computers to users, they are free to do this.

[1] https://www.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/home-route...

>It is still my machine, so long as I physically own it. If I run a virtual machine in the cloud it's not mine you see, because then I'm just renting it. If ad networks want to remove the ability to block ads they would have to own the machines and rent out those computers to users, they are free to do this.

You're free to do what you want, but not to read content.

So you just follow random links people send you? That seems like a horrible waste of your most precious commodity.

YouTube offers a way to pay for an ad free experience. Are you a paying member?

> So you just follow random links people send you? That seems like a horrible waste of your most precious commodity.

See my point about social objects.

> YouTube offers a way to pay for an ad free experience. Are you a paying member?

They don't offer it in my country, so no. But I do am a paying subscriber of Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime Video, FWIW.

So you're willing to trade your time for feeling connected?

That's a shame. They offer Prime video in Poland? I don't even think we get it in Australia :/

> So you're willing to trade your time for feeling connected?

Well, yes - that's life, basically :). Writing a comment here is also me trading time for feeling connected ;).

> That's a shame. They offer Prime video in Poland? I don't even think we get it in Australia :/

I'm surprised, I thought Australia is usually right after US in such things. As for Poland, they've started offering it something like a week ago. I signed up immediately after I learned about it, mostly because I wanted to watch "The Man in the High Castle".

Sadly not, Australia is actually usually pretty far behind. Luckily being Canadian and having lived in the US I have access but it's a pain.

Why would I pay YouTube for an ad free experience, when I already have an ad free experience?

I'm not saying YOU would. I'm saying the people saying they would happily pay for an ad free have the choice to and their choice to use an adblocker instead of paying says a lot about their actual beliefs than their claims on forums.

I for one would pay YouTube for an ad-free, smooth and offline-cacheable experience. At least now, that I have spare cash.

There is a rarely discussed topic of access for people who don't have funds or means to obtain it - like myself 10 years ago. It's tangential to ad blocking discussion, but a reason why I'm not sure if a pay-per-view Internet would be a good idea in general.

Oh, and if it helps me look better - I'm not really "ad blocking" per se, I'm doing responsive administration of my secondary OS (i.e. the browser) resources by using uMatrix, which makes me put some up-front decisionmaking work about which requests are or are not allowed on any page I visit ;). But it's fun, and I get to see how more and more insane the web is becoming :).

Check out youtube-dl, get-flash-videos or one of the other video downloader tools.

Well, I know them, but they belong to the same category as ad blockers - external tools you use because the service is not good enough :).

"So you profess to care about your lung health and gave up smoking, but you still live in a polluted city? Since people are perfect and can fix every problem in one go, you must be a lying hypocrite and not really care about your lung health at all. Also my judgement of what is or isn't a waste of your attention is valid, I have a right to judge that for you".

Actually it would be more accurate to say "You profess to care about your lung health and gave up smoking but you go and hang out in every airport smoking room you can find?"