Google's Chrome Browser Starts Disabling uBlock Origin

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of malware and I don't have a lot of respect for the modern ad networks. However this culture of expecting websites to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly.

There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then services won't host the content, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy the services they use in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target).

If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make their own service work or investigate the long list of alternative platforms.

You should have control over what content gets displayed on your screen.

This is an ad network using another unrelated product (chrome) to enforce its market dominance.

If there's a social contract, it goes both ways, and it wasn't the operators of user agents who broke it. They can't expect me to let their ads and trackers load if it's going to add 20MB and potentially compromise my system because they don't actually control where any of it comes from.

Except the “social contract” is manifested as laws and enforced by the state.

Currently at least 50% of online ads are outright illegal in most parts of the world.

Nobody is morally required to have their legal rights violated to get information. Period.

Yes but what tipped the scales was when policymakers all over the place started requiring adblockers. For example if you manage a company with 100,000 employees, you can push a button in Google Admin that installs uBlock Origin on all their browsers. Those people didn't have a choice. Enough organizations probably did this that I imagine it started threatening the whole economy.

>Currently at least 50% of online ads are outright illegal in most parts of the world.

source?

>There is an unwritten social contract here. Websites are willing to host and organise a vast number of content because that'll attract an audience for ads.

I'm not seeing the "unwritten social contract" when I look up something on Wikipedia, or download an old textbook or manual or something off Archive.Org. I don't remember seeing advertising on either of those services.

No. Im sorry, find another way to make money. Nobody has a god given right to deliver me ads.

The websites are welcome to expect payment if they so desire. They chose to host the content for free, and we get to choose which of that content we consume, and which of it we block. They have as much of a right to advertise as we have to block advertisements.

>If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system.

No, it wasn't: it was on what I would call "the ignorance system". The vast majority of users were simply too lazy or ignorant to install ad-blockers. Ads made money because most users had no idea they could be blocked, or because the users just didn't care. Hang around non-technical people and talk to them about this and you'll see: many users just don't see what the big deal is, while others will admit to finding the ads annoying but don't even know it's possible to block them easily.

However, this is slowly changing, as 1) word spreads about ad-blockers, which isn't just word-of-mouth, but all these news articles lately probably help too, and 2) the ads get more and more annoying and intrusive. Remember how everyone wanted pop-up blockers 20 years ago when those became so popular with advertisers? It took a while there too, for word to get out about the ability to block pop-ups, but eventually it became the norm and was even built into browsers because the pop-ups were SO annoying and even destructive.

>But strategically if a service's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use that service

Yes, they should, if they want to. Contracts require two parties to agree to something, and there is no such thing here. You can't just come up with a business model (e.g. pop-up ad supported website) and then claim there's a "social contract" in place when you just implemented this unilaterally.

The REAL social contract that's in place is the HTTP system the entire WWW is built on, where you send a request to a web server and it sends a response. What you do with the data you receive is up to you. It's absolutely no different than watching a TV show (in pre-DVR days) and then muting the volume or leaving the room when the commercials come on. Or better yet, in 2002 buying a DVR and just skipping the commercials.

You do have a point that a lot of services are funded by ads, and depend on enough people seeing these to sustain operations financially. But that's a business model chosen by these companies; they're free to choose a different business model if too many people start blocking ads. If people block ads, it's their own fault anyway, for making the ads too annoying. Back in the days of banner ads, almost no one cared about blocking them, because they just weren't that bad, just like no one really cared much about all the ads in newspapers. But that wasn't good enough for the advertisers. They brought ad-blocking on themselves by their own actions.

You haven't seen all the requests for donations on Wikipedia? It's not technically "advertising" I suppose, but it's basically the same, just more direct.

You know that's the argument used against people switching channels during advertising breaks, right?

And against the mute button?

And against the VCR?

And against DVRs?

When I buy the newspaper I don't read every ad in the paper. I might even skip an entire section of the paper. If you have the money you could even pay someone to clip out the articles and get no advertising at all.

History therefore 1) provides strong evidence that the unwritten social contract you are thinking has a clause that people are free to do what they can to avoid advertisements, and 2) shows that pro-advertising people will try to guilt trip them over exercising that clause.

Just like you are doing.

> There is an unwritten social contract here.

Nope nope nope.

The only “unwritten contract” (aka “my rights”) is that if you display something publicly (on the web or otherwise), I can choose whether to look at it or not.

If you put an informational poster on the street next to a billboard, I’m free to:

- ignore the billboard

- take a photo including only the poster and look at it later

- get someone else to take a photo of just the poster and send it to me

- get someone else to look at the poster and summarise it for me

- etc.

When you put something in the public sphere you give up control of it. If that deal doesn’t work for you, find a new business model.

In fact, as a society, we ought to protect ourselves better and ban most or all forms of passive/unsolicited advertising. So not only is there no “unwritten social contract” that requires us to accept ads everywhere, there’s a moral and ethical imperative to fight to reject ads.

You make it sound like it's a bad thing if those ad infested web sites disappear, but I beg to differ. If there's a demand for the service but ad revenue is no longer viable, then surely alternatives based on subscriptions, donations or some other for-profit or non-profit model are ready to take over, and that would be fantastic.

That's great, the ad economy can die in a fire and leave the space for alternatives that aren't focused on turning your brain to mush and promoting overconsumption. Some content creators will be hurt but the good ones will be fine.

And they have a right to only allow non-paid users to access their site through the their app or through a browser that is running in an environment where it can securely attest that the browser and its environment are to the site's liking.

That's going to be annoying.

show me an ad. fine. but don't track me and my browsing habits across domains and applications. that's disgusting. ads would be fine if they were static images and not bloated javascript spying devices.

good will has been eradicated.

Nobody is compelled to donate. Wikipedia doesn't automatically get 0.05c because I viewed their donation request.

On the other hand, the act of visiting someone's website with advertising they do get some remuneration automatically. And it inspires them to put more advertising on, and more intrusively.

These are good points, but to the viewer, the effect isn't really that different: in both cases, you're seeing something that 1) isn't the information you're looking for, 2) is "polluting" your screen space (i.e. getting in the way of what you are trying to look at), and 3) is asking for money in some way (whether directly in the form of a donation request, or indirectly in the form of a 3rd-party ad trying to get you to go somewhere and purchase something).

Your analogy isn’t fair.

The site is owned and operated by someone, and there are costs associated with its operation. It’s not the same as a billboard on the roadside, since you have to actively go to the site to read its content.

A more apt analogy is to a store, where you can freely walk into the store and browse whatever you want. Some stores might require a membership (Costco/NYTimes) and others might let anyone in, with distributors paying the store for prime real estate of their product (Walmart/CNN).

In either case, these stores may use Bluetooth/WiFi technology to closely monitor you when you go to their stores, and they may set requirements against masks to anonymize your activity in their stores.

I’m not anti-adblocker by any means, but we have no choice but to accept preventions imposed by site operators, and if we accept terms of service that include not utilizing adblockers while browsing their sites, we may be subject to whatever legal impositions they apply.

They do not have that right.