1999
Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible
(stackdiary.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
At his point it's like saying stop using the internet. Also most don't even have the freedom to totally ditch google, since time and effort and knowledge of alternatives are still a scarce resources. Also work and school might be tied to their products. I fear they are too big to fail. This btw why any sort of Open source, crypto, fediverse shit is only the second best option in my option when taking on the tech giants. My preferred option would be total nationalization of big tech platforms and handling them as public utilities. Drop them under some new UN institution and we would golden.
If a website stops working because it won't let you block ads, then THEY'RE the one with the problem, not us. I won't stop blocking advertising just because some company decides that my home is their place of business and says it's "not allowed."
The Internet is designed to route around damage (like the kind of damage caused by companies that try to make parts of it unusable). Folks will create new, open-source browsers, or flock to alternative websites that respect their privacy (and property).
True, or it's more like private public blob, with the private part dominating, but better to have nominal democratic and legistlative control than total corporate impunity to make and change the rules as the go and only being limited with nominal legislation by corporate puppet government. Also I mean something trans national, like the UN. obviously just giving all social media to their respective governments would just lead to same problems and wold still just leave the social media sphere into a plaything of US gov, that it is already, (and that why it will never happen because it would require US gov cooperating). But the minimal gain from all this would be that it would be only the government spying on you, not both government and the corporations.