For something as basic as an ad blocker or a theme loader you need full access to every page.
I got an email just yesterday pitching me on a special 'credit card for gamers'. I was meant to push a special credit card to my customers. The website has zero information on what % interest this credit card has, but even if it's totally normal and above-board: eww. I make computer games, I don't want to push credit cards.
It's all so slimy.
I had a "friend" (more of an acquaintance really) a while back that kept trying to convince me that this was a good idea and I (as the only programmer he knew) should help him do it. Couldn't for the life of me convince him that it was pretty much certain to backfire spectacularly in any number of possible dumpster fires he wouldn't want to be a part of. He just wasn't willing to see how sneaking crypto-mining software into other people machines without their knowledge could possibly be perceived as "bad" by anyone.
Yet take a sitcom such as Seinfeld. Each product they joked about, junior mints, snapple, etc were ads.
The furniture is an ad. The appliances, the cereal on the shelf, etc. If no ads, generic boxes and unbranded products will appear instead, nothing is free.
I am not saying videogames should be this way, merely pointing out that this is old, old almost century old advertising behaviour. The trick is to made the product better for it (Seinfeld junior mints was an incredibly funny episode).
Of course, I think the CC thing you mention, was more just a "spam your users", so hardly subtle and non-intrusive.
EG, on TV typically they write the episode, then after marketing says "ah look, he's supposed to drink a soda here, let's see who wants to pay for someone drinking their soda."
This I can live with.
I also have no problem with product placement in tv shows and movies. At least, so long as they don't force a change in the plot of the movie. Creative integrity has to be maintained.
Ads, on the other hand... Ugh. I hate them so much. They are incredibly manipulative and it seems like they all border on straight up lying now.
As an aside: The justified text here looks awful on mobile (and I checked Chrome, same result): https://i.imgur.com/AZl06K9.png
Also, you're right about the text, just re-designed my site so I'll take a look at that.
My second thought on this is...ouch, this is the same kind of stuff I'm tasked with working on in my present job. As I've mentioned elsewhere I work for a...fairly massive...corporate entity in the United States and I deal specifically with customer and member data. The majority of that data is highly protected and regulated, but the tiny little bit that isn't...we're working (and spending a ton of money) on "enriching" it from other data sources..and I absolutely hate it. This is a new direction for the company since there was a lot of executive leadership turnover in the past two years. But it makes me feel sick every time I see a new meeting pop up that involves Experian or Neustar or some other data broker. And the work on mining customer data from one part of the business to the other, people brushing off my objections because "look we already have legal approval, you need to get on the train before it leaves the station"...I hate every second of every day of it.
I am really surprised this is not a much bigger problem starting many more years ago. It's amazing that browser vendors let people hack the browser this way. I am very cautious about extensions I install. One I had been using was hacked this way. I found out only because I pay attention. Google never mailed me anything about it. What about people who aren't paying attention? Can't google email people to warn people since they know what extensions are installed and generally have an email address associated with the browser?
Anyone remember the AOL days when you’d visit your uncle and he’d have more space taken up by toolbars than content? Don’t let it happen to you!
