I’ve been blocking ads since around 2008. I started using Ubuntu as my primary and only operating system around that time - no cheating with dual booting! Back then, Flash ads were super popular on the web, and Flash Player for Linux would consume a ton of resources, making the experience of using a web browser unbearable. Blocking ads made browsing the web possible again.

After seeing how clean the web can be without ads I just… never stopped blocking them. Installing uBlock Origin is one of the first steps I take when setting up a new computer.

If at first my main concern was computer performance, my concerns have since shifted towards resisting manipulation (in a broad sense) by advertisers, and not letting some big tech company collect data about me. Ad tech and tracking users go hand in hand: the more information they have, the better they can target the users and the pricier the ad spots get.

One more thing! Do you have friends or relatives that run into computer problems often? Installing some malware off of the internet? Asking you if they can trust this no-name online store that seems to sell tech gadgets suspiciously cheap? They probably found the scam website through ads! Install an ad blocker for them, and they’ll magically have fewer computer problems. I sometimes jokingly refer to ad blockers as the best antivirus.

I recommend uBlock Origin on Firefox. There’s also an extension called SponsorBlock that uses a crowdsourced database of sponsored segments on YouTube and skips them. On iOS, I use Safari with Wipr 2 and SponsorBlock extensions. Both of these extensions are paid though, but are well worth the money.