"Who will win, a multibillion dollar industry or a couple of txt files?"

The textfiles! [1]

"Howard said his gripe is not with advertising per se, but with the time it takes to view a page with advertising. "It can take 4 to 6 seconds to download each ad, and if you are on the Web a lot, that really gets annoying," he said. "If the advertisers want to pay for a high-speed Net connection to my house, then I would take the ads, but right now it is costing me money to look at their ads.""

This is reason #1.

As a user, I chose minimalism. I prefer a UNIX-like research OS instead of a corporate branded one from a FAANG company. I prefer text-based software and the VGA console. I rely heavily on programs other than web browsers for making HTTP requests. Sometimes I forget why I became a software minimalist. When I started using the internet in the early 90's, there were time limits; I had to use the time as cost efficiently as possible. Thus the answer is speed, cost and reliability.

Through this choice of minimalism I am able to avoid, to a noticeable extent, others usurping as much of my resources as they can get away with. I am able to minimise having to allocate computer resources and bandwidth to subsidise the "multibillion dollar industry" of serving internet ads. I can use the internet on slow connections and it is still reliable.

IMO, when users debate the merits of internet ads, we are in fact debating the merits of allowing this "multibillion dollar industry" to use our self-financed resources; the computers we bought, and the bills we pay to keep them powered on and connected to the internet.

"Now, whenever you load a website, scroll on social media, or hit Enter on a Google search, hundreds or thousands of companies compete in a cascade of auctions to show you their ad. The process, known as "programmatic" advertising, occurs in milliseconds, tens of billions of times each day. Only automated software can manage it."

This is reason #2.

As above, when users debate whether internet ads are acceptable, IMO we are debating whether to let others use some of our computer resources and bandwidth. Specifically, we are debating whether to subsidise the operation of the "multibillion dollar industry" of internet ads.

In addition, arguably we are debating whether it is acceptable for others to add milliseconds of delay to the fulfillment of our HTTP requests while ad selections are made in real-time -- for the purpose of supporting a "multibillion dollar" industry.

Users self-finance their internet use. However the "multibillion dollar" internet ads business and those companies who rely on internet ads-related revenue for survival are not self-financing. They rely on the contribution of user resources.

I have not seen much debate on the question of internet ads framed as a debate over donation of user resources nor user consent to millisecond delays. However, for me, these comprise 100% of the reasons I cannot tolerate internet ads. This is why I use a text-only browser to read things posted to HN.

I enjoyed this article and the historical perspective it offers. I think that Privoxy and other similar projects not focused on a single application deserve mention when recounting the history of combating the attempted advertising-driven commercialisation of the internet.

1. However I am not sure that the "block" list model is scalable if ad tech keeps growing -- I think we may see some antitrust regulation that could result in an even greater number of ad servers on the internet. Personally I use an "allow" list approach since I do not need to worry about images nor JavaScript.