Mark Addison of Adblock Plus was uninvited to this year’s IAM Annual Leadership Meeting, spurring discussion about the ethics of online ads and ad blockers. Seems like an appropriate time to explain why I block ads.

Security

Don’t roll your eyes. Advertisers tell us malware-embedded ads were yesterday’s problem. This is a bold faced lie. Google, MSN, eBay, Yahoo, Forbes, Daily Mail, DailyMotion, and thousands of other high-traffic websites have served malicious payloads this past year, and McAfee has seen growth in ad-driven malware targeting mobile users.

User experience

UX is biggest draw for ad-block advocates. Often, ads are designed to churn click-rates by being obnoxious, intrusive, and inescapable. I will not subject myself to their full-view popups, their advertorials, or their damned auto-play videos. UX bonus: ad-blockers lower power and data consumption on mobile devices.

Exploitation

Most advertisers are honest enough (by marketing standards, anyway). Unfortunately, many use exploitative practices to trick inexperienced internet users, often the elderly. These scumbags lure in victims claiming that a cream can give them a face lift, or that Obama wants single mothers to return to school, or that “one weird trick” will solve all life’s woes. As an aside, targeting the (mostly poor) elderly is disgusting. I don’t understand how Jesse Willms sleeps at night.

Quality

Advertising incentivises garbage content. I won’t bore you with a rant about click-bait and listicles, but the problem is bigger than BuzzFeed (OMG). These incentives drive real news institutions as well. Sensationalism gets more clicks than hard news, which is why the Weather Channel peddles idiotic headlines like “9 Cities That Will Make You Beautiful”, why pundits spend more time talking about hashtags and viewer polls than world events, and why an unapologetic buffoon is a presidential front-runner.

‘…to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects’

The most important reason you will have to pry ad-blockers from my cold, dead hands is because, “Fuck You”. Computers are now our most personal possessions. The armies of admen, delivery networks, and behavior analysts do not get to decide what runs on your device. You decide what runs on your device. Full stop.