• Companies are restricting user freedom by limiting the use of adblockers and controlling online content interaction.
• Growing crackdown on browser extensions raises concerns about user control over online experiences.
• The right to use adblockers is being challenged as companies exert more control over user interactions with online content.
Axel Springer filed several suits in Germany against Eyeo on the grounds that the Adblock Plus extension interfered with their business…
Umm yes, lady madam of the court, let the record show that I hereby counter-sue the advertising companies for interfering with my ability to use the internet!
Maybe users wouldn’t have felt the need for adblockers if ad agencies hadn’t made them increasingly obnoxious, intrusive and pernicious. They just couldn’t leave a fraction of a penny on the table and made sites more and more unusable without adblockers, so screw 'em. They can reap what they’ve sown.
I never even thought about blocking ads when they were just some static text on the side of the page. Once I started seeing images that significantly slowed the page loading time, I started searching for ways of blocking them. That was when I was still on dial-up and just one image added many seconds to the loading time. Now ads can have tracking and potentially malicious scripts embedded in them, so it’s important to block them for security and privacy reasons.