There’s some inherent risk in the ad blocker as well, though. If it’s an extension, you’re trusting that this thing you installed, that can read and modify every website you visit, isn’t going to do anything sneaky. Yes, maybe it’s open source, but every once in a while something sneaks into open source projects, too. It will get caught, but it could be after the damage is done.
I mean, I use an ad blocker. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to value security and not use one.
Which stockholders? Valve does have some, but it doesn’t appear that they are published and are probably mostly employees since it’s not publicly traded. Maybe you’re saying that like game publisher stockholders from EA and such are involved in decision making at Valve? That seems plausible but it doesn’t seem like they’d have a ton of power over operations, more just some negotiating power.
Level 5: Handle cookies, a local key value store, and a local database internally in a secure way.
Level 6: If you can’t watch Netflix on your browser it’s probably a non-starter for some users so better figure out a way to include DRM compatibility. But if you do it, the privacy minded will get really upset, so ideally you’d figure out a way to do it in some way that can be easily turned off or removed.
Level 7: alright, so implementing all of that was hard. But if you don’t implement it in such an insanely optimized fashion that you can win arbitrary script tests that are meant to strain modern CPUs, the audience most likely to use your browser (geeks) will immediately move to something else and say your browser sucks. Get optimizing.
To be fair, I bet some percentage of those that don’t use an ad blocker ARE using something like no script and just don’t need one as a result.