I personally disagree with "forward thinking" description for what AdNauseam does, hence why I disagreed when the AdNauseam authors asked me to implement hooks in uBO[1].

To me the ideal for many reasons[2] is to reduce as much as possible the number of connections to 3rd parties on any given web page.

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[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/67

[2] Privacy exposure, page load time, bandwidth, CPU/memory.

I hate the tracky nature of the web nowadays, and feel that AdNauseam is fighting fire with fire. UBO is fighting fire with CO2, fine unless the fire has it's own oxygen supply, which I would argue the online ad industry has in the form of copious numbers of inattentive and uncaring users.

So it automatically clicks all ads your browser encounters hundreds of times to reduce the value of ad impressions.

I think it would be hard to deny that clicking every ad hundreds of times is straying into uncoordinated DDoS territory, considering the installed userbase. I don't see that as enlightened or forward thinking.

I agree with gorhill on this and would rather decrease connections to 3rd parties. After all, part of the reason the web is so slow is that browsers make so many 3rd party connections! With that in mind, my approach to ad blocking is to combine DNS blocks, MVPS /etc/hosts + my own entries, JS blocking, and uBlock Origin. This setup catches more junk and is more likely to work while transitioning or temporarily changing my setup.

Personally, I would welcome similar extensions for social media, automated follows/likes/post/retweets, let facebook backup GBs of generated pictures per users for facial recognition or Gmail mine random emails. A more noble use case for lifefaker if you will.

And no, I don’t mind consuming contents from hundreds of ad financed sites while simultaneously wanting the majority of them to simply disappear because they could likely never sustain a different business model than ads.

Some examples other than subscriptions would be sponsored content and creating a product such as an ebook or selling products that are related to your content.

I run my own image host, my own irc bouncer service, and many many more for all the use cases where I'd have to rely on ad-infested services.

Perhaps I'll write a follow-up post later.

AdNauseam and similar programs certainly throw a monkey wrench into the discussion.

"Acceptable ads" allowed by default (opt-out) are inherently and OBVIOUSLY the right idea, but the acceptable ad list should be maintained by a disinterested party, not an advertiser or ad agency.

Problem is that disinterested parties are just that-- nobody cares enough to do it. Who wants to go to that effort to _allow_ ads?

One solution would be for Google and other large advertisers to fund a not-for-profit company to build acceptable ad lists, and then convince adblock addon developers to enable the lists by default through sheer benevolence.

Enforcement is easy, if they play games like AdBlock and start allowing intrusive ads, Gorhill (uBlock Origin developer) and those like him will instantly disable the lists and their entire model falls apart.

I think you're overestimating how universal that opinion might be, and underestimating how many people don't want any ads.

I edited my original post to make that clear, I thought "allowed by default" was sufficient but several people had the same reaction.

Though I expect you'll find that the number of adblock users who check such an opt-in-to-ads box to be vanishingly small.

The goal is to make the web a markedly less hostile place to visit by eliminating intrusive ads while still allowing sites to support themselves through advertising.

That's not my goal. My goal is to eliminate unsolicited advertising.

I don't want it, and if websites have to find other, non-advertising-based business models to support themselves, so be it.

If I'm installing an ad-blocker I want it to block all ads.

this is why most people use ads, they are annoying and intrusive.

That doesn't mean it should be enabled by default.

That's silly. If a person is installing an ad blocker, the "obvious" thing is for it to block advertisements. You may not like it, but everybody is fully capable of making up their own mind on whether they think certain advertisements are acceptable or not.

It was about being literally unable to use some sites, I don't care about still images at the bottom of a page.

For me it's about privacy and security too, but most of all, I just don't want to see any ads whatsoever. I don't watch ad-supported TV, no ad-supported radio, no ads to my mailbox, won't use apps that show ads, and no ads are allowed in my web browser either.

What's obviously the right idea for me is making all unsolicited advertising illegal, and throwing any violators of that law in jail.

should flyers be illegal? posters? tv ads?

mozzila is now trying to introduce non tracking ads in their browser. how are non tracking ads different from posters on the street? (minus security concern, honestly i trust mozilla on that)

Yes, yes, and yes.

Who needs all this junk? No one.

When walking down a scenic street, you know who says to themselves, "What this street really needs to make it truly pleasing is more flyers and posters"? No one.

When watching TV, who yearns for more ads? No one.

This is all junk no one needs except the advertisers themselves. The rest of us don't want their garbage.