Are ad blockers safe to use?

Until AI upended the traditional model of internet content, a fairly stable online economy had endured for thirty years.

Companies, entrepreneurs, enthusiasts and media outlets launched websites whose costs were covered by advertising revenue.

Those adverts were initially garish and obvious but became increasingly sophisticated and numerous over time.

Consumers complained about online advertising, but since the only alternatives were to pay for content or not have it at all, website ads became an accepted part of life.

However, some websites took the concept further than others.

In many cases, web pages were swamped with adverts to the point where the content itself was unreadable, covered in a mosaic of hover ads, pop-ups and banners.

When it’s impossible to read a single sentence of a webpage article because of advertising, the user experience has clearly gone wrong.

Ad blockers attempt to redress the balance by allowing original content to shine – though as we’ll see in a moment, this poses an existential threat to the websites themselves.

Are ad blockers safe as an end user?

Providing they’re sourced from a legitimate app-store approved brand, web browser extensions and smartphone apps are very safe.

They scan webpages for advertising scripts or links, preventing those elements from loading while ensuring primary on-page contents (typically text and images) get through.

As well as conventional adverts, they can block tracking scripts or pixels, cookies, social media features and security threats.

Since the code spaces allocated to online adverts could potentially be hijacked by malicious code, using an ad blocker is arguably safer than not using one at all.

You’re also far less likely to have your personal data sold and traded between marketing organisations if the ads aren’t reaching your device in the first place, enhancing privacy.

Webpages will load more quickly without the additional advertising code, displaying as the designers originally intended, and functioning optimally on your web browser of choice.

What about the drawbacks?

The first challenge ad blockers introduce is that they often struggle to distinguish between adverts and legitimate on-page content.

Embedded videos could be blocked, which might affect functionality or undermine that webpage’s existence.

The websites themselves may detect ad blocking software and refuse to display content, rendering the software somewhat redundant.

Sites or apps might invite end users to subscribe to a paid business model to unlock access, as opposed to looking at the content (and some ads) free of charge.

Some ad blocking tools still downloads ads but then prevent them displaying, which consumes the same amount of data and time with minimal end-user benefit.

Annoyingly, some ad blockers whitelist adverts and let them through, while a few accept payments to let certain advertisers through their dragnet.

Blocking adverts means platforms like Google Analytics won’t work as effectively, since data will be distorted.

An extinction level event

The biggest argument against the installation of ad blockers is that websites and apps cost money to create and maintain.

From programmers and graphic designers to writers and editors, content creation costs are followed by bills for domain name ownership, maintenance and server hosting.

Unless site/app visitors are paying a subscription, data harvesting and advertising are the only ways a website or app can generate revenue to cover its costs, let alone make a profit.

If that income is withdrawn because ads aren’t displaying and advertisers aren’t achieving any click-throughs or sales, they will stop funding the site and it may cease to exist.

The internet is already facing an existential threat from generative AI plagiarising existing content and repackaging it (often inaccurately) in free search engine overviews minus those vital blue links.

Any consumer actions which reduce ad revenue in tandem will inevitably lead to websites being rendered economically unviable and forced out of business.

As such, while AI overviews are a more immediate threat to the existence of the internet as we know it, ad blockers are also playing a role in its downfall.

So to answer our initial question: are ad blockers safe? The simple answer is yes, but we can’t recommend them.