Motherboard:
A commissioner at the US Federal Trade Commission who is leaving the agency after six years of working on consumer privacy issues has some critical words for the ad industry.
Speaking with Ad Age, departing FTC commissioner Julie Brill lamented the current state of consumer tracking and data collection on the web, linking the rampant rise of ad blockers with the ad industry’s foot-dragging and non-cooperation in the commission’s efforts to create privacy systems based on user consent.
Like many critics, Brill points to Do Not Track, the failed system meant to allow consumers to opt-out of invasive tracking by flagging their browsers, which the ad industry fought tooth-and-nail and eventually killed by ignoring the flags outright. She says that the industry’s resistance to doing things the “easy” way is at least partly to blame for the consumer response.
Bang on. If the industry had respected consumer wishes and respected their customers, we wouldn’t have the proliferation of ad blocking and ad blocking blockers resulting in a virtual arms race of Us vs Them.
Yep. I installed blockers on iOS the second I could and it’s amazing the difference it makes in speed and battery consumption.
The funny thing is, I whitelist pretty much every site that I visit routinely (like this one) but new sites? Prove to me that you don’t have 25+ trackers all wanting a piece of me.
Fuck’em All!
Not that I’m defending the ad industry’s annoying tactics, but it seems like I’ve read here and elsewhere that the rise of ad-blocking software on iOS had stalled out. A bunch of people installed it the second they could (like rick gregory, apparently) and then… nobody else. It would be nice to hear an update on this topic with some figures, if possible.
the information “super” highway has many potholes and misadventures … mis-information super chaos.
Yeah… thanks for that.
Anyway, here’s an article from WSJ:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ad-blockers-are-employed-by-10-of-u-s-desktop-users-comscore-finds-1459501262
The bottom line is that the about 10% of people are using ad-blockers, but that number has been stable for the past year. This isn’t an “arms race” in the traditional sense, since escalation seems not to be taking place.