I think stopping it was a good idea. These link-grabbing sites like Skimlinks and Viglink are just used to try to make money on the sly, off of unrelated online purchases. I don't mind if it's in the open e.g. an Amazon Affiliate link that, if used to make a purchase there, kicks back something to the affiliate. But that's my choice to make, not the site's.
"We can't guarantee the performance of the site if people are using third party scripts/extensions/plug-ins/etc."
I get that, but I have to use such things because of "assets" that are linked in from
outside sites, especially 3rd-party ads and tracking scripts. Those are the problem, not the actual contents of this site. On top of the security / privacy risks, they use a lot more bandwidth and severely impact the usage experience if I don't control them. On some websites e.g. the Washington Post, I see 30+ 3rd-party scripts being blocked
per page loaded. And you wonder why your fast PC is struggling to display a web page?
