I think this largely ignores "how" ads are distributed. The website you are looking at did not select _any_ of the ads you see. They chose a network who is delegating that placement to someone else. Depending on which ad network, this could delegated by several different ad networks until an advertiser is finally selected by the final intermediary.

In principle this may not be a very important distinction. However, I often think that I would stop blocking ads _IF_ the website I was looking at had actually vetted the ad I was seeing. I do not want to see so much garbage just for visiting a website. For example: I block all ads from theverge.com, not because their content is bad, but because I find the outbrain ads at the bottom of the page so asinine and tasteless that I'd rather not see any ads.

To continue on with theverge example, If they actually had selected the individual ads they were placing, I'd be totally fine with that. But I am not fine with them delegating that responsibility to another company that clearly is not up to handling the task.

> The website you are looking at did not select _any_ of the ads you see.

That's irrelevant. In general the content creator gets to choose how their content gets monetized. They own the copyright after all.

That ads blocking isn't considered yet a copyright violation in the court of law probably has to do with the upsides, like protecting against malware and privacy.

But blocking ads for commercial reasons, like Brave is doing, only to replace those ads with their own, that's just racketeering and I hope to see them lose in a court of law.

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> I do not want to see so much garbage just for visiting a website

Then stop vising that website and go to alternative websites that treat you better. Voting with your wallet works.

Also a lot of websites these days offer subscriptions. I bet for example that 99.9% of HN visitors don't pay for subscriptions to their favorite publications.

Which would just go to show how self entitled we feel to getting other people's work for free.

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Note that I am using browser extensions, like uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger, but I'm only doing so for privacy reasons.

And I'll never trust Brave with my privacy, sorry.

The final point you made, where you stated:

> Note that I am using browser extensions, like uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger, but I'm only doing so for privacy reasons.

is, I think, very relevant to the entire discussion. With the way browsers work, and the way the web works, blocking ads is well "within" the allowed scope of the internet. I, you, we never explicitly consented to browser tracking. It was created when there were no rules. After it had been happening for a very long time, it was added to large TOS & Privacy agreements, and by then, was so ubiquitous that we had no where else to go.

Publishers have power over you to put ads in their pages and track you across the internet. I have a problem with both the quality of those ads and the method in which they are delivered. I still have some power over whether or not I see ads, so I chose to exercise it.

I’m not sure how you can use the internet to distribute your content and claim copyright over how the user consumes the content. You’re distributing code to a user. The user can interact with that code however they see fit via their browser. That is the nature of the internet. Anything else (I’m looking at you Washington Post Subscription Runtime) is trying to have things both ways.

Just because a content owner copyrights the content does not mean they can control the user’s environment once the content has been provided to the user - unless of course you own that too (cough Kindle cough). Thank God we still have options for web browsers.

> Voting with your wallet works.

But it doesn't, not in this case. Very few people want to manage a separate payment stream, and a separate login, for each content provider on the off chance that they might stumble across that provider's content. And those that do don't want to pay a flat rate for access to content that they might never stumble across in a given payment period.

My uncle used to give me a lot of grief for getting my music via bittorrent--but it was never about avoiding having to pay for content, it was about objecting to a monetization model (DRM) that was less convenient than its free alternatives. I started paying for music just as soon as Spotify made it easier to pay than it was to pirate.

Ads are the same way. I don't mind paying for my content, but blocking ads and circumventing paywalls is currently less work than the hassle of managing a fleet of flat rate subscriptions. Brave offers an alternative where you only have to move dollars once (buying BAT and funding your browser's wallet), and the money is thereafter distributed according to which content you spend more time viewing.

It solves a problem that no other "voting with your wallet" way currently does.

I'll confess that I'm not currently using brave that way, but it's only because they don't currently support a unified wallet across browsers. Once I have to manage just a single BAT balance, though, I intend to keep the shields up and the contributions flowing, and set up recurring transfers into the BAT wallet from my bank account.

Brave isn't replacing ads with their own, and you have to opt-in to see any of Brave's ads in the first place.

As far as privacy, that's your prerogative. But I trust Brave more than I trust Chrome.

Don't really see your point.

They don't choose the brave ads either.

In return you get shown ads - and they get nothing unless they give in and sign up for another service that may or may not actually pay them something.

Showing ads is something users have to opt-in to see (using Brave Rewards). Users can turn off ad-blocking globally if they missed the ads, but blocking them (ads/trackers) is one of the main draws to downloading Brave, IMO

10 (5?) years ago, that used to be called malware.

It's not malware if it's done at the users request. And the user is free to display the web pages it downloads in any way they want.

Users willingly installed toolbars too.

And if it was truly willing, and the toolbar only did what it claimed it would do, then it wasn't malware.

It is nice analogy. Sophisticated malware disabled competitor's malware to be the one and only, acting like antivirus software.

About fifteen years ago, this was called Gator:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claria_Corporation

You don't have a right to show ads to users. (The CFAA actually works in consumers' favor here: circumventing a user's adblocker is just as much of a crime as hacking into a server.) You do have a right to refuse service to users with adblockers, but to my knowledge Brave doesn't interfere with sites that do this - I still can't get past the paywalls on WSJ/NYTimes/Bloomberg.