Why Facebook’s war on ad blockers could help scammers
Brief
Reports that uBlock Origin is stepping back from the never-ending effort to filter Facebook ads are a reminder that ad blocking is no longer only an argument about inconvenience, publishers, and lost advertising revenue.
It is also an issue of security.
For years, ad blockers have occupied an uncomfortable place in the web economy. Publishers and platforms rely on advertising to fund their services, while users install blockers to escape intrusive banners, autoplay videos, tracking scripts, and feeds that increasingly feel designed around monetization rather than the people using them.
That debate is usually framed as a contest between a platform’s right to make money and a user’s desire for a cleaner browsing experience. But it leaves out an important detail: Ads are not always merely ads.