That used to be the reality around decade ago for those who don’t know. Some applications changed the default front page of the browser, hijacked other websites to inject popups and so on
Two decades now actually. By 2016 we were already seeing the mass transition to browsing on phones instead of PCs, Windows 10 was already out and for reasons I am not quite sure of the old homepage and toolbar hijackers were on the decline and adblockers were on the rise although I am sure there were still people using malware ridden Internet Explorers for years after.
I'm noticing that Ad-Shield is becoming a continual fight these days with pageloads that complete then they fly in with a "ha ha here's a fake error report turn off your adblocker aye?".
Every time their live support chat is open (why would the anti-adblock firm even offer one), I send them Goatse.
Unfortunately there is little chance that a human is anywhere near the other end of that chat these days, so your evil is somewhat wasted.
> (why would the anti-adblock firm even offer one)
They want to appear to care. And appear to be a company of real people, who you might like if you met in real life, who will be out of pocket if you don't look at their ads.
It’s like screaming at a cashier because the supermarket head office made annoying changes to the company.
Occasionally your server deserves a bit of dickish behaviour because of their attitude, but this is relatively rather rare in my experience.
The cashier is a real human doing a job to put food on the table and has done nothing to deserve it, and may well have been far more hurt by the head office than you.
It is a common cycle: as they get more aggressive with trying to make the ad based business model work, more and more people are pushed to installing blockers. At this point there is a choice: find a less crappy business model (not an easy task, many have failed) or double down and get more iffy with the adverts and who you partner with to serve them. Eventually it gets to a point where such a high proportion or the viewers are using blockers and the next step in ads/stalking is a step too far even for them, and then the blocker blocking attempts start.
Ad blockers are malware protection.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-recommends-installing-an-ad-b...
I've been looking for explicit alternatives to Fandom for some content and it's annoyingly sparse.
Just the other day I saw some meme about how if we saw as many ads taking over sites like we do now, that was a sure sign of having your machine getting infected with a virus.
Generally I've found a good portion of websites that block users with ad blockers tend to be the worst offenders with aggressive ads...