The privilege of the ad-free Internet

I saw a post by Kev Quirk on Mastodon in which he was responding to this blog post from Mozilla about their plans for trying to improve the state of online advertising and trying to make it better for end-user privacy. This presumably includes ads in Firefox based on this statement:

One of the most obvious places we will do this work is across our own products, including Firefox, Fakespot, and likely new efforts in the future. Advertising on our products will remain focused on respecting the privacy of the people who use them.

Kev's response was:

This is an incredibly shortsighted take. I understand that people don't like ads but the truth is ads aren't going anywhere. Mozilla has tried "more diverse revenue streams" and yet they still rely mostly on Google dollars to keep afloat. The bigger problem is he completely missed the point of the article, if he read it at all. Mozilla's point wasn't just "hey we're throwing some ads in Firefox", it is trying to make ads something where organizations, including Mozilla, can make ad revenue and the people using the products/web sites/whatever showing the ads aren't giving up so much control of their data and privacy. Win-win for everyone.

His statement also reveals a privilege that guys like Kev have that he presumably isn't thinking about: he can afford to pay for those products and services. That is a privilege most of the rest of the world doesn't share. Everyone else has to rely on ad-supported services (or if they can afford it they simply aren't willing to pay).

When I responded to that post:

he responded:

It isn't "more of the same" or "doubling down", it's Mozilla trying to make the reality of ads on the Internet better for everyone, not just cater to privileged guys like Kev (or me). It is literally what the article he posted the link to talks about.

Tangent: this response to the article also is one of the things that annoys me most about being on Mastodon (or the Internet in general). An organization like Mozilla posts an article about how they want to make ads on the Internet better for users (frankly part of their mission to "make the Internet better") and people fly off the handle about it without really taking the time to read and consider what was actually written. Furthermore followers of these folks then say/do things like:

So today is the day where I deleted both #Firefox and #Thunderbird from my computers.

Really? You read that article and this is the conclusion you came to?

This kind of stuff is constant on Mastodon (likely from the privileged white men that dominate it). It's a torch-and-pitchfork attitude and God forbid you cross them and their followers dogpile on you. There is always a "bad company of the week" on Mastodon and plenty of people willing to be outraged.