Reply to post: Re: snooping my machine

Ad-blocker blocking websites face legal peril at hands of privacy bods

FF22

Re: snooping my machine

"What "system"?"

Free market. You've probably heard of it before.

"How does it know where I've gone?"

Because that's where the ads are served to you.

"How does it know that the site I visit isn't just a one off? "

It doesn't have to. The point is: if you and everybody else are visiting a site only once, because it serves "bad" ads (whatever that might mean), the site only earns pennies. But if you regularly return to a site, because it serves "good" ads (whatever that might mean), it makes a tons of money. So the site with the "good ads" will proliferate, and the site with "bad ads" will go out of business.

It's the very same as what you do when you buy products on the free market. If a company makes bad products or provides bad service, then people will buy from them only once, and never again, and will even alert others to not buy products from that company. So this company with bad products will get no business in the long term. People will instead flock to companies that make better products, and that company will be able to expand, and grow, and provide even more good quality products and services.

Now, if people would only pick sites based on how bad or good ads on them are, then the same evolutionary process would take place on the market of ads, and they would get all better. Instead, with blocking, there's no incentive to make ads better, and actually the most reckless site is that will be the last standing. And all the good ones will go out of business.

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