Ethan Zuckerman vs. the pop-up ad

“I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good,” he wrote in an essay about the relationship between advertising and the internet. “I have come to believe that advertising is the original sin of the web. The fallen state of our internet is a direct, if unintentional, consequence of choosing advertising as the default model to support online content and services.”