The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

The best about web ad-blocking ever written. By Marco Arment:

People often argue that running ad-blocking software is violating an implied contract between the reader and the publisher: the publisher offers the page content to the reader for free, in exchange for the reader seeing the publisher’s ads. And that’s a nice, simple theory, but it’s a blurry line in reality.

By that implied-contract theory, readers should not only permit their browsers to load the ads, but they should actually read each one, giving themselves a chance to develop an interest for the advertised product or service and maybe even click on it and make a purchase. That’s also a nice theory, but of course, it’s ridiculous to expect anyone to actually do that.

His conclusion, concerning the totally out of control abuse of ad trackers and over-blown web sites:

Those days are over. It won’t be easy for many to move on, and not everyone will make it.

Read the full article. Thoughtful, clean. Makes the whole thing so obvious.