>Specifically, you have a business relation with whatever website you are going to that serves you ads. That website has a clear interest in helping their ad-platform attribute ads on their website. After all, that website depends on those ads for your income.
Just a nit, "...that website depends on those ads for their income," not mine.
But yes, you're correct. And I do, in fact, aggressively block ads and the trackers/spyware/malware that goes with them.
And website owners are well within their rights to block me from viewing their site if (when, actually) I refuse to view their ads -- a point I've made in perhaps a half-dozen comments here on HN just in the past 12 months or so.
And I'm fine with that. For exactly the same reasons I gave for not wanting anything to do with ads/trackers/spyware running on my private property -- a site is the website owner's private property and they should be able to "charge a cover fee" (i.e., require that I view ads) to view the content of that site.
But WEI doesn't change that dynamic even a little. Rather, it forces me to give up control of my private property and privacy whether I want to do so or not.
I'd add that the "benefit" here isn't giving website owners the option to block me if I don't wish to view the ads run on their site -- they can already do that without WEI. In fact, some sites already do so. The only "benefit" AFAICT is that the ad platforms would now have enormously more information (in that they can now track me everywhere with a cryptographic signature regardless of any steps I might take to protect my privacy) to validate ad impressions and reporting metrics for the advertisers.
The result is that website owners have the same capability they've always had, but now I'm forced to subsidize some of the richest companies in the world with my electricity, CPU cycles, data, network bandwidth, browsing history, and likely my PII.
That's what I object to.
>In that case, there remains an argument of "if we don't do attribution the entire web is worse off, so we solve the tragedy of the commons by 'making the right decision' in the defaults for the user-agent". But that argument is clearly unreasonable to me.
Yes, it is unreasonable. I take great pains (I never log in/create accounts on any Google properties, block trackers and "analytics," self-host my email and content I wish to share in the Internet, etc., etc., etc.) to maintain at least a semblance of privacy, which is already a time/cost sink for me.
And these rapacious scumbags want me to jump through more hoops and run their code on my systems just so they can charge advertisers more for shit I don't want anyway? I'll say it again: Fuck. That. Noise.
tl;dr: Websites can already (and I support their ability to do so) block me (or anyone else) who runs an ad blocker from viewing their site. As such, the only folks that will have new capabiliities/benefits from WEI are ad platforms and advertisers. With whom I have no relationship whatsoever and don't want their spyware to execute on my private property.
Just a nit, "...that website depends on those ads for their income," not mine.
But yes, you're correct. And I do, in fact, aggressively block ads and the trackers/spyware/malware that goes with them.
And website owners are well within their rights to block me from viewing their site if (when, actually) I refuse to view their ads -- a point I've made in perhaps a half-dozen comments here on HN just in the past 12 months or so.
And I'm fine with that. For exactly the same reasons I gave for not wanting anything to do with ads/trackers/spyware running on my private property -- a site is the website owner's private property and they should be able to "charge a cover fee" (i.e., require that I view ads) to view the content of that site.
But WEI doesn't change that dynamic even a little. Rather, it forces me to give up control of my private property and privacy whether I want to do so or not.
I'd add that the "benefit" here isn't giving website owners the option to block me if I don't wish to view the ads run on their site -- they can already do that without WEI. In fact, some sites already do so. The only "benefit" AFAICT is that the ad platforms would now have enormously more information (in that they can now track me everywhere with a cryptographic signature regardless of any steps I might take to protect my privacy) to validate ad impressions and reporting metrics for the advertisers.
The result is that website owners have the same capability they've always had, but now I'm forced to subsidize some of the richest companies in the world with my electricity, CPU cycles, data, network bandwidth, browsing history, and likely my PII.
That's what I object to.
>In that case, there remains an argument of "if we don't do attribution the entire web is worse off, so we solve the tragedy of the commons by 'making the right decision' in the defaults for the user-agent". But that argument is clearly unreasonable to me.
Yes, it is unreasonable. I take great pains (I never log in/create accounts on any Google properties, block trackers and "analytics," self-host my email and content I wish to share in the Internet, etc., etc., etc.) to maintain at least a semblance of privacy, which is already a time/cost sink for me.
And these rapacious scumbags want me to jump through more hoops and run their code on my systems just so they can charge advertisers more for shit I don't want anyway? I'll say it again: Fuck. That. Noise.
tl;dr: Websites can already (and I support their ability to do so) block me (or anyone else) who runs an ad blocker from viewing their site. As such, the only folks that will have new capabiliities/benefits from WEI are ad platforms and advertisers. With whom I have no relationship whatsoever and don't want their spyware to execute on my private property.