Mastodawn

Ad Blockers helped kill the open web https://christianheilmann.com/2025/12/17/ad-blockers-helped-kill-the-open-web/

Ad Blockers helped kill the open web | Christian Heilmann

Ads are everywhere - when you open a page from Facebook, it injects ads in it with its internal browser and that doesn't have anything to do with the page itself. Just like scraping, but more so and super aggressive. Also newer TVs show ads, even though you bought their hardware for a large lump of money. Subscription services started showing ads - Netflix and Prime on their lower levels and ad blockers there are non-existent, since they are DRM.

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Chris Heilmann Dec 17

@bundyo yes, that _is_ my point. By blocking them we started an arms race that now culminates in services moving away from the web. The browser in the Facebook app has nothing to do with the web, that's already inside the walls.

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@codepo8 @bundyo

How can you say that one thing caused the other?

For example, I see the same rampage of physical ads in real life, and it's not like there are ad-blockers for those.

I enjoyed the rest of your write-up, though. Thank you