Elliot Clowes:

According to this article 27% of American internet users use an adblocker (which seems a little high to me). But either way, the 73% are experiencing a very different internet. And it’s a far, far worse one.

The internet these days has lost a lot of its charm, and I personally don’t find it quite as fun to browse as I once did. But I think without the help of an adblocker I would find it much worse.

For the longest time, I didn’t run an ad blocker on my work computer. I wanted to make sure that the websites I visited were loading without any alteration, since I was often helping online publishers with problems related to how their site was displaying. But the web without an ad blocker is completely miserable.

I switched to Brave earlier this month, which has built-in ad blocking that I left on as an experiment. And I was much happier because of it. Although I want website makers to be able to earn a living from their work, there must be a better way — a way that doesn’t involve privacy-invasive, obtrusive advertisements.

➝ Source: imlefthanded.com