The advert wars - Francis Irving

One of the pitched battles in this century’s cyber war is about advert blocking and injecting. It’s in full flow. You can tell - journalist friends complaining that ad blockers have killed Joystiq, a 10 year old gaming magazine; web friends complaining that an ad blocker charges advertisers to not block some ads. I’ve got some perspective. Back in 1996, I helped make one of the earliest web advert blockers, WebMask. Why did we do it?