https://kevin.thecorams.net/posts/2020/01/therein-lies-the-rub/
The tagline of https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/29/browser_security_enigma/ reads:
Brave, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla gather together to talk web privacy… and why we all shouldn't get too much of it
Browser makers keep coming back to the need to please advertisers
And therein lies the rub.
Websites cost money to run. Content costs money to create. Software, such as web browsers, cost time and frequently money to create and maintain.
As the saying goes, “there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.”
On the flip side, people have finite amounts of time and money. People want information, entertainment, etc. People are reluctant to pay for access to websites, especially since most people are paying for their Internet access in the first place.
Advertising fills in the gap, providing money to run the websites, pay for the content and the software . . . and apparently at little to no cost to relucant people unable or unwilling to pay monetarily.
The cost is there, however. It is paid in privacy, in attention, in the bits and bytes of our data caps being nibbled away, in electricity, in time . . . .
It is time to start looking for better ways.
