this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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[–] gon@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing a little bit.

I believe you're referring to iPhone's clean energy charging feature. Here's my question: if you can use clean energy, why wouldn't you? It might make very little difference to the environment, but a little difference is still a difference.

Still, using ad-blockers is really not like that iPhone feature:

  1. That feature relies on the grid itself, meaning it's useless for a lot of people that have basically no clean energy where they live, while ad-blockers can be useful to anyone using the internet.
  2. It may be to the user's detriment, while ad-blockers improve user experience.
  3. It's device dependent, whereas ad-blockers are available to virtually everyone, not just iPhone users.
  4. Ad-blockers can be combined with clean energy charging.

The impact ad-blockers can have on the environment is similar to iPhone's clean energy charging in the same way a healthy diet is similar to eating a carrot. Yes, on the surface level they do just reduce your consumption of fossil fuel-generated energy, but ad-blockers reduce your energy consumption overall, not just trade it for green energy (that still requires tons of fossil fuels to be burned).

Much love,
gon