> Built-in ad blocking.

I read this and thought "that's dumb", until I realized that's because I already take for granted that every browser will provide an ad-blocker.

This has not proven true for my mobile browser, and it's driving me crazy.

If you're using Android, then Firefox supports ad blocking.

If you're not using Android…well, that's the choice you made.

Last time I checked ad blocking on Android was quite difficult to set up. It requires root, it runs as a background process, and I need to set up a proxy for each wifi connection. When the adblock process died, the internet connection would stop working completely.

I just want an ad blocker in the browser, like on the desktop.

Ad blocking on Android system wide using something like AdAway ranges from easy to impossible depending on the phone but you can install the same ad blocking extensions on mobile Firefox that you have on the desktop without any trouble.

Thanks, I should give Firefox on Android an other try.

> Last time I checked ad blocking on Android was quite difficult to set up.

Nope, just install Firefox, go to Tools:Add-ons, find AdBlock Plus or uBlock Origin, install it, and never see an ad again. No rooting, no proxying, no goofiness.

Only works in the browser, but it works well enough for me.

Why are ads addressed as browser related? If the question would be about "the perfect internet as medium" then yes, I would love to see an internet without ads. Built-in ad blocker would just create a challenge for marketers to create a new solution and I doubt that they would come up with something that we would like to see.

I wouldn't want any browser to have built-in ad blocking. The best situation from my point of view is if majority of users gets to see the ads, while I don't. Who's going to pay for ads anymore if browsers come with adblocking by default?

"Who's going to pay for ads anymore if browsers come with adblocking by default?"

Why is this my problem? Nobody pays for buggy whips any more because we don't use horse and buggies. Times move on.

Apologies for sounding flip. I understand lots of folks have business models based on ads. This is most unfortunate, but it's no reason to screw over the consumer and not give them something they want simply because other people get paid money for it.

The consumer that wants ad-blocking already downloads an ad-blocker and gets exactly what they want. Making ad-blocking the default option for a mainstream browser means that people who don't dislike ads sufficiently to find a plugin that blocks them no longer subsidise the web for those that do.

It's your problem when you start encountering paywalls where previously only [blocked] ads existed.

Exactly

That's debatable. The internet was without ads once so I'd say you'd lose some, win some.

That was a long time ago and even mailing lists and BBS had ads.

You can see it already on sites like Reddit and Buzzfeed, users block ads so the only solution is paid content hidden as user content. Be happy that, for now, it is more lucrative to separate the ads from the content, because the alternative is even worse.

In some ways, this last shred of free journalism we all enjoy online is because of those big ugly ads. Without them, no journalism, just illusion.

Let me counter that with: As long as the quality of online journalism is measured by clicks and ad impressions, its purpose is not journalism.

What else would you like it measured by? Paid subscriptions? Because we all know how that goes.

The breadth of online journalism we see today is precisely because of those ads everyone claims to hate. It allows anyone to quickly join the pot and lets the market decide their value. Without ads we'd be stuck with the 4 fuhrer model we had for the last 100 years.

Why wouldn't donations work? Something like Gratipay (formerly Gittip) for journalists?

Because a journalist needs a minimum of $50 a day, it's a hit based business, and readers are fickle. Everything you say must be in complete agreement with their world view to get a donation. One mistake and they're gone.

Also, it's been tried before and has failed every time.

A subscription based donation system might still work though.

Ok, thanks. It was an honest question, btw, thanks for taking it as such.

    Without the ads all you'll see is
    paywalls and backchannel press releases.

And Hacker News.

Where people complain about paywalls, leading some to paste the entire article into a comment?