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Online Ad Czar Berates Adblockers As Freedom-Hating 'Mafia' (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Randall Rothenburg, the president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has made a speech branding the creators of Adblock Plus (who were banned from the conference where he made this keynote) as "rich and self-righteous," and accused adblockers of subverting freedom of the press. Speaking at the IAB's annual conference, Rothenburg characterized the Adblock Plus team as "operating a business model predicated on censorship of content."
Of course, nobody in the soviet bloc or even china has ever experienced communism. They experienced totalitarianism and China still does. Many would argue that so does Russia. Regardless, we have not seen large scale communism in the world yet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I am sure that morally and ethically ad blocking is wrong. On the other hand I am free to not visit a page. And I do this, I abandoned several sites where I was a regular visitor for years. It is not fair to enjoy the content but do not pay the price.
I am not sure that you are legally free to block ads. If - similarly to the EU consent cookies - web pages would start with a popup saying "you agree that read the page without ad blocking LEAVE/STAY" and you choose STAY, then I guess you legally accepted ads.