> legislation could require websites to label all ads with some kind of strictly defined watermark. In addition, some kind of software-readable indication would be required for accessibility purposes. Could be a special HTML tag or attribute. That would make ad blocking much easier.

The legislation would have to be very explicit about the format of the label and that it be machine readable, otherwise you'll get obfuscation like Facebook is doing:

https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-blocks-ad-transp...:

> This is not the first time Facebook has changed its code in a way that has broken our tool. For example, all ads are supposed to contain the word “sponsored” as part of a mandatory disclosure, so users can distinguish between ads and their friends’ posts. Our tool recognized ads by searching for that word. Last year, Facebook added invisible letters to the HTML code of the site. So, to a computer, the word registered as “SpSonSsoSredS.” Later, it also added an invisible “Sponsored” disclosure to posts from your friends. Many of the participants in our project noticed the effects of this change because it caused some menus to pop open unexpectedly or the page to scroll to the top repeatedly. Nowadays, the disclosure says “SpSpSononSsosoSredredSSS.” Some of these changes were likely also intended to thwart ad blockers.

> some kind of software-readable indication would be required for accessibility purposes. Could be a special HTML tag or attribute. That would make ad blocking much easier.

I don't share your pessimism about the feasability of politically banning all advertising, but I agree that something like this would be the next best thing, and a great step.

In the US at least there is rightfully a free speech issue. It would take some serious constitutional wrangling to get a ban in place.

Tracking technology and terrible analytics platforms that slow everything down are much lower hanging fruit.

As much as I hate ads and would like to see them go, I don't want lawmakers telling me how to build my websites.

Lawmakers already tell you how to build websites.

Can you refer to specific laws on restrictions to building a website?

The only one I could find was related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and of course GDPR, but that's related to handling of personal data.

ADA was what I specifically had in mind, but in the EU also the cookie law and similar.

I think the cookie law is a bit misguided. The problem (that they should want to solve) is privacy invasion and tracking, but instead of saying that, they flipped it around and allowed an exception for a vaguely defined category of "strictly necessary" cookies. I believe their intent was entirely good.

If they said what they wanted to say, the law would essentially say "don't violate privacy without explicit consent." I'm relatively OK with that; that's not telling me how to build websites, that's just making certain harmful activities illegal. It wouldn't be very different from saying "don't distribute malware that attacks your users."

In its current form, I'm not too thrilled with the cookie law. And I sure as hell don't want lawmakers adding more, worse, laws on top of that. Go too far in that direction and they're turning software into nagware (I loathe cookie popups, I loathe google's "privacy reminder", I loathe applications that blast me with notifications and hints, I loathe permission dialogs, I like Unix's Rule of Silence) while making its development a legal minefield.

I want to be able to write FLOSS software (or websites) with a user interface that pleases me, and EU is looking for ways to make that illegal. In a manner of speaking, I hope they do just that, then people who want pleasant software have more reason to organize an underground software liberation movement where no fucks about shit laws are given.

I disagree with the cookie law as well.

>EU is looking for ways to make that illegal

I'm sorry, but what are you smoking? Willy nilly data collection is illegal, they don't say much about UI.