“Before you start downloading, there is one very important thing to understand: By blocking ads, you are depriving content publishers (like us, hello!) of advertising income and insights into what readers want.”

Please Don’t Block Our Ads. Here’s How to Block Ads in iOS 9, par Molly McHugh de Wired

Web

Maybe you were shopping for a new tent recently. You clicked around REI’s site, did an obligatory Craigslist search. Eventually, you wound up on Amazon, because everyone winds up on Amazon. Perhaps you added a few tents to your Wish List. Then you left that part of the Internet, and surfed somewhere else. Facebook, probably. Tumblr, maybe. WIRED.com, definitely! And suddenly, you noticed one or two or all of these sites trying to sell you a tent you’d just been perusing. Then you went to Facebook and saw another tent right there in the middle of your News Feed.

At this point, you probably know why that happened. Some unknown entity was watching you browse around tent websites, figured out that you’re really into tents, then told an advertiser, “Hey, this person is really into tents.” This is how the web’s media companies make money: Tracing your trail across the consumable web as bots follow you and take notes and report back to the advertiser overlords. It’s creepy, sure, but sometimes convenient. You are in the market for a tent, after all.