It’s important to note that blocking ads is NOT theft. Don’t fall for this creepy idea, which is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy.
Beautifully written.
I fully agree. But websites should also be able to chose who can access them.
I have a cousin who works deeply in advertising and marketing infrastructure. He’s a code guru who helped to build advertising engines for Facebook and now works deeply in the industry. He has told me to my face that my efforts to delete ads from my life is stealing from him. Coincidentally he uses Linux and a suite of privacy and security products to hide his identity. Rules for thee but not for me.
It’s completely fair to block your website for user who refuse ads or tracking, but obviously that’s not a step they like to take.
I would like to respectfully disagree here. Don’t get me wrong here, I’ve been using stuff like uBlock Origin for years. And I do not make money on my website, nor do I upload to YouTube and so on. (So I have no horse in the race)
If “the deal” is you get to visit the website and do whatever they offer, and THEY sell your data and penetrate your eyeballs with shit you don’t need, that is the deal. Admittedly, I’m no lawyer so I don’t know if it’s “theft” if you don’t hold up your end of the deal here.
Now, companies like Facebook and so on can fuck right off, and I will continue to block everything as long as I can, but don’t kid yourself if you for example like a YouTube Channel and block everything there, they will make less money, which can in theory impact their livelihood.
Can anyone recommend a blocker that is as good as uBlock Origin and can white-list only certain channels on YouTube? Especially some niche guys i’d like to support without subscribing outright to their Patreon
I can wholeheartedly vouch for lichess.org. Not only because of their privacy policy but for what they offer in terms of chess. Besides the standard game you get an analysis engine that points out good moves, how likely a player is to win, let’s you switch sides, etc.
But my favorite thing is actually the different chess variants you can play. There’s one where you are facing a legion of pawns, another where captured pieces explode and take down adjacent pieces and another where you get to replace captured pieces on the board. But my go to is simply chess with randomized but symmetrical positions in the backline (pawns stay the same). This makes every game unique and challenging; you actually need to think about your best moves from turn 1 instead of memorizing openings which is perhaps my biggest gripe with default chess.
Give it a try, I say 😉.
