Always was. Does anyone remember the defacto original ad-blockers that blocking popups were? Firefox was marketed with this feature.

It is basically a condom for the Internet. It makes maintenance for family computers much easier.

But if you block pop-ups, that web page with Rick Astley's cool video popping up won't play.

/s

> Does anyone remember the defacto original ad-blockers that blocking popups were?

I was using the Internet Junkbuster (and later: Privoxy) in the mid-90s, many years before that. https://web.archive.org/web/19961222061917/http://www.junkbu...

Of course, back then you could just disable javascript in your web browser to protect yourself from malicious sites and annyances, and practically all sites would work perfectly fine.

Government does:

https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/what-we-do/cybersec...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/93ypke/the-nsa-and-cia-use-a...

Isn’t this a violation of the first amendment in the same way that a politician blocking someone on Twitter is?

That's cute. You think the NSA and the CIA care about the constitution.