The founder of AdBlock Plus weighs in on PPA:

Privacy on the web is fundamentally broken, for at least 90% of the population. Advertising on the web is fundamentally broken, for at least 90% of the population.

Yet any attempt to improve this situation is met with fierce resistance by the lucky 10% who know how to navigate their way around the falltraps. Because the internet shouldn’t have tracking! The internet shouldn’t have ads! And any step towards a compromise is a capital offense. I mean, if it slightly benefits the advertisers as well, then it must be evil.

It seems that no solution short of eliminating tracking and advertising on the web altogether is going to be accepted. That we live with an ad-supported web and that fact of life cannot be wished away or change overnight – who cares?

And every attempt to improve the status quo even marginally inevitably fails. So the horribly broken state we have today prevails.

This is so frustrating. I’m just happy I no longer have anything to do with that…

  • Ephera
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    55 months ago

    I mean, that’s just your ISP ripping you off. They would just increase prices even more, if they’d have to give some of it to webpages.

    • @sturlabragason
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      5 months ago

      Yeah, I know they are. My point is, I pay for internet acces each month. I’d like that to include full access to all the internet has to offer. If that were the case I feel that what I’m paying currently would be a fair price. This should be what pays for all these services and and should cover running all the stuff if each and every company wasn’t as greedy.

      Basically if we strip away all the CEOs and shareholders, then each household paying for internet access should be more then enough to run it.

      • Ephera
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        25 months ago

        Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. Big problem there is that the internet spans between nations. You can’t just nationalize service providers and have everyone with a webpage register it there to receive their rightful share of money.

        Obviously, some system could be created, just as some global government could be established, but with hardly any structures in place so far, it would be difficult to regulate.

    • @barsquid
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      25 months ago

      This is not really on topic any longer, but I would love to see them regulated as utilities.