>this will eventually make it impossible for small business owners to make a living through ads

You say that like it's a bad thing. If a piece of content or a given website cannot survive without ads propping it up, was it ever worth anything in the first place? Ads are far from the only revenue-generating method available nowadays, they're just the easiest/laziest.

When online advertising-as-we-know-it finally chokes to death under a mountain of its own waste, maybe we'll see a drop in blatant linkbait lowest-common-denominator garbage that drives up the S/N ratio. There may be less content overall, but I suspect the content that survives will be much higher quality as a result.

Not that I particularly care which way things go, I run adblockers on all of my machines from a security standpoint as much as anything else.

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

This is Ycombinator, a site for supposed future business owners. Yes, it's a bad thing.

"If a piece of content or a given website cannot survive without ads propping it up, was it ever worth anything in the first place? Ads are far from the only revenue-generating method available nowadays, they're just the easiest/laziest."

Sure. Instead, we will now have fully integrated advertising that can't be blocked.

Would you rather see an advertisement or an entire article on a blog centered around a product? The average consumer isn't going to take a stand on things like this because they just don't care. It will only pollute the content that you actually enjoy even more.

"There may be less content overall, but I suspect the content that survives will be much higher quality as a result."

Higher quality content doesn't pay the bills alone. I don't mind because my business doesn't rely on ad revenue.

However, when I see more and more people clamoring for something like a 'basic income', I really start to shake my head...because things like this are quickly destroying many jobs.

It's not the first time the tech community has dug their own salary grave and then cried out to everyone when they can't pay the bills or they lose their house.

This is why I'm not on the other side of this: I would rather take advantage of this foolishness than be forced into it.

> Would you rather see an advertisement or an entire article on a blog centered around a product?

A site that mixes ads in content won't be popular for long (it's bad content). It's also often illegal without disclosure in many places. And once you are producing this kind of ad-injected content you already have a personal connection with an advertiser and make non-targeted advertisements!(everyone sees your same blogpost about the same shoes).

If a website can afford to do that they didn't need ad networks to begin with! They could have "magazine ads", I.e dumb images served from the source domain. Thats exactky what I'm hoping for - Internet ads being just like magazine ads.

>A site that mixes ads in content won't be popular for long (it's bad content).

But what if the site is the ad? For example, a lawyer's blog would have lots of blog posts about law, but the whole purpose of the blog is to advertise the expertise of the lawyer and encourage you to buy the lawyer's service. Or maybe an artist wants to showcase his portfolio of his work online, in the hopes of later securing juicy contracts or donations.

Or what if the site is simply a forum for people to "network" and self-promote themselves (i.e, LinkedIn, HN's Show Me, etc.) Those sites can indeed be popular (as people may go there to willingly consume ads), but they're all basically vehicles for advertising.

That also makes sense but in that case you don't need ads - you have another much larger income.

an entire article on a blog centered around a product This is why I'm liking the slow rise of tools for blocking sponsored content as well. (Particularly when combined with FTC requirements about labeling, since if you can't tell the difference enough to block it, there's some investigators who'd like to have a word with you.)

I encourage sites who feel like they need to to block adblocking users. Their demise will be that much quicker and better alternatives can rise in their place.

I wouldn't want adblocking to be the default setting, but does anyone actually propose it?

I am leaning towards this view. Advertising has existed since pretty much the advent of writing and commerce but technological advances have made it increasingly sinister. Through targeting, automated split testing and other advanced methods the advertising industry seems to exist to weaponize psychological research.

Nobody is proposing it per se, but many companies and people are installing it on every browser. The average person probably didn't even care about seeing ads in the first place.

Forcibly removing revenue streams in the tech industry is not really going to help any future business owners.

Sure, Ad revenue isn't the only way to make money, but when you have $0 startup capital, it's many times the only way.

This only pushes out the smaller business owner and average person that wants to make some extra money and gives more power to big companies and venture capitalists.

Nobody seems to think long-term, only in their own self-interest.

If advertisers thought about long-term, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Thinking short-term is actually a staple of business. And so advertisers have for ages been burning trust to boost sales metric, and now they are surprised people are rebelling when they finally have means to do so?

The problem with advertising, on-line and off-line, is that it's user-hostile. It's manipulative and abusive even before you add trackers and malware on top of that. Maybe there was a time when advertising existed to inform people about available choices. I don't know when that age was, but it's not what's the focus of advertising nowadays. If you're acting hostile to me and my friends, I have a right to defend myself, and to instruct my friends on how they can defend themselves.

..and as a business owner, I also have a right to defend myself.. which most likely means more and more power to people with money.

See what happens when we have these pissing matches? Everybody loses.

It's even worse for the average user because businesses have the resources to either destroy you in lawsuits or change tactics.

It worked real well for the independent artist in the 90s that could actually earn a living.

Now they are forced to go to one of the major labels or apple/spotify, which are much worse in terms of compensation.

Wasn’t the whole movement aimed at helping these sad artists that were being screwed over?

I called bullshit on this 15 years ago and predicted what has happened today.

If there wasn't a culture of rampant entitlement for free things, we would have a better landscape today.

But, I can only warn the community so much.

So what are we, as customers, supposed to do? Lie down and give up? Businesses have strong incentives to get as much money from people as they can get away with. In a competitive economy there's no leaving money on the table - if you don't pick it up, your competitor will. The only limits are those we impose ourselves - whether through laws or through just saying "screw this" and installing an ad blocker.

> Wasn’t the whole movement aimed at helping these sad artists that were being screwed over?

And who screwed this up? Not piracy, really, but labels. That and clinging to business models that don't make sense in a digital economy. The reality is not obliged to cooperate with whatever money-making idea you like - you have to find a one that works. In the digital world, content is cheap and copying is free; everyone needs to learn to deal with it. But alas, companies are more willing to destroy the Internet itself than change their practices. That's why people retaliate.

Frankly, the Internet is more important than some artists not getting properly compensated because of it (even if it's really all because piracy), and it's better to lose them than to have everything DRMed up.

The businesses started this war, and now they're complaining people are defending themselves and it gets harder to take their money? Cry me a river.

I use it, but I wouldn't want it to be the default option. I prefer other people to watch ads. To a willing person, injury is not done. If they can't be bothered to install an adblocker, so be it.

Firefox does. I recently see an, ironically, advertisement on Caltrain, sells me that. Guess they might use TV ads to promote their ad-free browser, when this becomes the norm?

Does Chrome now ship with an adblocker, suggested at installation?

> trying to persuade someone to do something is immoral.

It depends on how you do it. If your ad takes up a lot of bandwidth and processing power, to the point where by the time the article loads on my phone I can't scroll through the actual content because my CPU is busy trying to render your pretty little ad, then you've fucked me, you've fucked yourself, and you've fucked the content provider.

It's the equivalent of a local pizza chain sending someone to play a vuvuzela outside my bedroom window.

The problem is that I don't know whether ads coming in are a person politely handing out flyers, or a vuvuzela-playing jackass - and that's assuming he's not trying to literally pick-pocket me - so it's easier to just rub my magic ad-block lamp and tell the Genie to disappear everyone.

That's really not the impression I get around here. I think it's clearly the intrusiveness with which ads are displayed and all those strings (trackers) that come attached with them.

I think most people on HN would agree that ads which don't require huge amounts of scripts, show video, play audio, connect to 17 tracking networks or make up 70% of the page weight would very much be tolerable.

Yup. I'm total ad hater, and yet I'd be totally fine with plainly marked, non-intrusive, simple ads, that don't waste bandwidth and CPU power. E.g. what AdWords originally was. If they don't distract, I'm more willing to actually read them, even out of curiosity.

If ads aren't obtrusive, irrelevant, insulting, distracting, inappropriate, or malevolent, I have no problem with them. But until at least those last two still exist, even infrequently, I must strongly recommend an ad-blocker to all friends and family for their own protection.

I don't have a problem with ads, I mostly object to tracking, profile building, and the sharing of that profile. When I read a People magazine in my doctor's waiting room, nobody knows much about me in particular. There are online ad networks that serve dumb ads and those I generally whitelist.

I wouldn't say illegal. The libertarians are pretty vocal.

However you as an individual have the power to choose whether or not you consume advertising, and it's almost always a better choice not to.

You have that option - you can relinquish your citizenship. Otherwise, taxes fund public goods and services you benefit from, such as medical care, infrastructure, education, crime prevention and border security.