I recommend finding everyone responsible for this and exercising your right to free speech on them. It works for politicians, and it should work on this other flavour of bastard too.
Once again, Stallman was very prescient: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
How is this, conceptually, any different from sites that used to block IE out of spite?
Would it be acceptable for a website owner to block users from Detroit (78% African Americans)[1] or block users from El Paso (82% Hispanic)[2] because the website owner claims that fraudulent ad clicking is more prevalent from those cities?
Would it be acceptable to only serve web pages to people without disabilities and without a need for specialist accessibility software because it's not economically viable to consider users with disabilities?
Would the poorest 10% of the population be able to access web pages and services delivered over the Internet with old hardware (all they can afford) and with limited computer literacy and limited ability to raise complaints (that are ignored anyway or responded to by an AI algorithm that doesn't care)?
A website owner is still discriminating when they hide behind technology such as AI algorithms, Web Integrity APIs, etc and pretend that their use of such technology is non-discriminatory.
[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymich...
[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/elpasocitytexas...
For one, blocking users in a geographic region would not be legally considered racial discrimination unless you can prove intent. This is the bullshit loop hole that makes it easy to get away with discrimination, but that's the way it works.
If Google really wants to play this game and create a technical gate preventing usage of sites by anyone that uses a browser that may be blocking ads, there's a legitimate business need there and all they have to say is they are no longer willing to serve users that refuse to pay by viewing ads and providing valuable data. In the case of Chrome they can extend this and say they are helping make sure anyone hosting content online can also protect their revenue as well.
Is that a shitty practice and will it cripple the internet as it was originally designed? Absolutely. But likening this to systemic racism is an insane argument and really doesn't help get at the underlying problem that we would all rather have an internet that is open, free, and not designed entirely as a corporate ad playground.
From a legal viewpoint, the answer is dependent on the complexity of state laws[1]. What a website owner can do with a website in one country obviously differs from what they could do in another country. Most countries have very weak anti-discrimination laws, and if they do exist, they typically only apply for very specific purposes such as employment discrimination based on age. These limited laws tend to be near impossible to enforce short of someone self-incriminating themselves. In some countries however, an example being Norway, laws against discrimination can be very strict and routinely enforced to the level of requiring all website owners to implement WCAG 2.0 at AA level[2].
From an ethical viewpoint, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[3] states in Article 2:
"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty."
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
[2] https://www.uutilsynet.no/english/about-us/903
[3] https://www.ohchr.org/en/human-rights/universal-declaration/...
As a consultant, this would mean I can't turn down a client. Ever. It doesn't matter if I have higher paying offers, moral objections to what they want built, or silly just don't want to work with them.
This type of blanket declaration of freedoms can only extend so far as another person's rights aren't infringed upon. I the consultant example, my right to decide how I spend my time and value my work should be protected. If I can't discriminate for any reason because it could be deemed "[an]other status", my life can be wrecked because anyone asking for my services are owed good faith effort and I can't legally decline.