Don't invent the torment nexus.

No, but it's definitely a boring dystopia.

Except on news websites that only give you the choice between "subscribe for X€" and "read for free (accept all)". So annoying. Still no idea why that's legal.

We also have this glorious extension which just fucks them all off:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/istilldontcareaboutcookies/

I'd be happy with a static image, hosted by the website which when clicked takes you to the advertiser's website

I didn't mind the static ones (within reason), websites need to pay their rent. And not everything can sell something.

But even those have tracking and gross injection code now.

In the long ago if a site needed advertising it was a small banner at the top of the page, and often hosted by the site itself with gasp an actual relationship with the advertisers or sponsors.

you have to put in extra work just to make your website not work with privacy measures. like you have to put in the work to use some bloated javascript framework that doesn't work with noscript instead of just sticking with plain html and css, which would work. on top of that, i've encountered way too many big websites that don't even have a noscript tag so all you see is a ghost layout or a blank page.

The ones I've seen disable the 'consent' bits by default, but then there's 'vendor preferences' where 'legitimate interest' is automatically ON in 58 places (I'm not exaggerating; I have counted it) and you have to manually off all of them.

When you click the question mark at 'legitimate interest', all it says is some vendors are not asking for your consent to use your data but collect it based on their legitimate interest.

It's infinitely vague and it has the vibe of 'I'm not going to ask for it, I will just take it and I will use it for whatever I want anyway'.

That's why everything is an App now, and every website tells you "it's better in the app". In the app they have full controll over your device and can access much more data points, while the website is controlled on the users site and might have AdBlockers and other security features enabled, potentially hurting their ad revenue and data they can sell. From a developers perspective it's a nightmare to develop and maintain website, android and Mac os app side by side. Just having one good responsive website is cheaper, easier to maintain and gives you less headache with app store restrictions, reviews, device incompatibility etc.

Hear me out: part of me welcomes that.

Currently, most websites are awful to browse, and a few are not. If we switch to a world where most are inaccessible to me, and a few are nice, then I'll spend less time being frustrated by cookie popups and the like.

Like, if a site's going to be terrible, I almost prefer it just not let me in at all.

As an example, I used to click the occasional Twitter link. Now that I can't see comments, I refuse, and life is a bit improved.

F U C K. T H A T

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https://adnauseam.io/

You're looking for something like this. It still blocks the ad from your view but in the background it still loads/plays the ad, and sometimes even clicks it to spend their precious ad budget.