They are known for making a browser that constantly puts them into a financial deficit. Mozilla is still looking for a way to pay their bills in the long run.

There's actually a real world example of this. Some cats that are disected in schools are euthanized cats from shelters, because the alternative is cat farms that breed cats just to be killed and disected

That's what I always say. Targeted advertising should be illegal. Contextual advertising is acceptable.

If I'm on the star trek wiki, serve me ads for star trek, sci-fi, and whatever. You don't need to know anything about me specifically.

We'd still need to do something about like ads that take up too much space, hurt page performance, or introduce malware, but removing the stalking would be an improvement

When you drive by a billboard on the highway, is it invading your privacy?

Possibly?

Let me rephrase it a little- When you walk past a digital advertising screen at a Westfield Shopping Centre - is it invading your privacy? (The answer is a definite YES, they have facial tracking and keep metrics on where you go in the mall, how long you loiter in certain locations, what stores you go, whether you came back out with bags, etc)

As well as predatory/not, there's also a trend with attention grabbing/not.

There was a period of time where Google AdWords ruled the online ad space, and most ads were pure text in a box with a border making the border between content and ads visually distinct.

Kind of like having small portions of the newspaper classified section cut out and slapped around the webpage.

I still disliked them, but they were fairly easy to look past, and you didn't have to worry about the ad itself carrying a malware payload (just whatever they linked to).

Companies found that those style ads get less clickthrough than flashier ones, and that there's no quantifiable incentive to not make their ads as obnoxious as possible. So they optimized for the wrong metric: clickthrough vs sales by ad.

More recently, companies have stepped up their tracking game so they can target sales by ad more effectively, but old habits die hard, and predatory ads that just want you to click have no incentive to care and "de-escalate" the obnoxiousness.

You're asking people who don't care, who don't use the internet the same way we do, to suddenly care enough to take manual action outside of their knowledgebase amd comfort zone

If they don't care about ads then they won't care if those ads are private or not.

I will say that we’re definitely getting to a level of adblockers that the sites actively care about blocking content or warning about people using adblockers. It’s starting to affect their bottom lines.

most people are stupid. you and I don't click on ads, sure, but how do you think google got all their money? you have to cater to the idiots.