June 28, 2023 By Christopher Boyd
Online content is largely powered and paid for by advertising. Almost every site you visit, every forum you browse, and even the online stores you buy things from is an advert extravaganza, and they don’t just stop at showing cool offers for shirts at 50% off. The scaffolding the adverts sit on goes out of its way to track you, tie you to clicks, associations, and more. More adverts, tailored to your theoretical interests, then start to follow you around across other sites. Sometimes, it’s not very sophisticated: Ever searched for the one and only quarter height stepladder you’ll ever buy in your life? Congratulations, every advert is a stepladder.
Sadly, dozens of stepladder adverts are far from your only concern. We’re going to explain why running an ad blocker is a good thing for your digital health, and highlight all of the ways things can go wrong with ads enabled.
