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Ad-blocking is piracy, and that's okay
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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Unpopular Opinion
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Hmm... People in your comments either conflate ads with telemetry (you can have tracker free ads) or they don't understand that there is value in ads equal to at least a fraction of sold content. Maybe they're triggered by the term piracy, which admittedly is a strong term, but honestly your core argument is correct.
I'm pro-piracy, though, and certainly take pride in picking and choosing who or what I put value in. It's more obvious with paying a patreon or buying a product you already pirated, but allowing ads to play (or at least giving a video view though to trigger the counter, liking and subscribing, etc) is also a form of support. And yes, you can do so without completely violating privacy although they're certainly making that harder lately...
to be fair, the most popular ad platforms like google ads use trackers, so it is something to consider. but i do agree that this kind of lumping is bad since this thinking hurts ethical ad platforms too.
There's no such thing as ethical advertising.
I believe that advertising without trackers is ethical.