> Backblaze shouldn't even be using FB pixels to begin with.

> Why is that? Perhaps they get business value out of it?

Oh, they get value out of invading my privacy? Carry on then!

Running and measuring ads is one of many things that delivers value to a business, yes. The privacy issue in this case is clearly an implementation mistake and seems to have been resolved.

Ignoring the situation and context to make a comical statement doesn't really add anything to the discussion.

> The overwhelmingly mentality on HN is that All Ads are bad.

Ads will at best waste my time/bandwidth/processing power and at worst compromise my privacy and/or convince me to make a bad financial decision.

I don't see why this mentality is wrong?

Ads are micropayments that work. I don’t like them per se and run an ad blocker and PiHole, but the fact that others don’t allows me to micropay for a lot of content with my time.

> Ads are micropayments that work.

One thing if those micro-payments end up enriching the creators, but another when blackholed into the coffers of a few tech cos.

Surely you meant to say:

> but the fact that others don’t allows them to micropay for a lot of content with their time.

I'm not objecting. I do the same. But in what sense are you paying? I'm sure I'm not.

When I read a 5 minute Medium article, I'm paying with 5 minutes of my time. If I decide to bail out 1 minute into the article, I have still lost 1 minute of my time.

The creator isn't getting any benefit from it, but I'm still paying.

＞ Because by their definition, All ads are tracking ads.

John Gruber has an ad at daringfireball.net, currently for a company called Simris. IIRC the ad is pure text, not loaded by a script, and does not track you. Other blogs (usually security professionals ime) have text-based ads that are probably part of the theme in a static site generator.

I should have put /s at the end of that sentence.

I know all of what you said, but somehow HN still thinks Ads are bad.