Google, Facebook and the Ad Block Wars
A conversation with activist, author and editor Cory Doctorow about ad blocking, privacy and the future of the open Internet.
Last month, Google announced it would start blocking ads in its Chrome browser starting in 2018. This follows on the heels of Facebook’s announcement last year that it would force its ads upon users of ad blockers because Facebook declared that its ads would no longer be objectionable to users. Between the two , Facebook and Google accounted for nearly all of the growth in the $73 billion digital advertising market.
With both Google and Facebook focused on cleaning up digital advertising, is there no longer a need for standalone ad blockers? While we at AdBlock hear from users, daily, about the more egregious forms of advertising on the web, we wanted to sit down with someone that could provide perspective on the so-called “ad block wars” and the future of the open web in a world increasingly dominated by large tech firms like Google, Facebook and Apple.
We found that person in Cory Doctorow. As a New York Times bestselling author, Cory has written extensively about the impact of technology on our future. As an activist, Cory is a special adviser to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group dedicated to helping individuals protect their privacy and security online. Finally, as a long-time blogger and editor of BoingBoing, Cory has had a front-row seat to view the impact that ad blocking has on web publishers like BoingBoing.
Fresh off a multi-month tour for his latest book, Walkaway, Cory sat down with AdBlock to provide his (very-informed) perspective on the most-pressing issues that pertain to the future of the open Internet.
Do you have any concerns about Facebook and Google, two of the world’s largest advertising companies, deciding which forms of advertising are acceptable for everyone?
I tend to view these companies through a very tactical lens. I don’t harbor the illusion that any of these companies are my friend. I think that Google is very interested in a world where there is a public web that is open, because through its ad tech and tracking, Google is confident that it knows how to make more money as the web grows. Contrast that with Facebook, whose goal is to enclose the web. As far as Facebook is concerned, if every service on the web disappeared into Facebook’s environs, and you couldn’t see anything on the web without a Facebook login, that would be the best future to live in.
As to Google’s suitability as a custodian for which ads can be seen on the web, I do think in general they will try and avoid the more invasive forms of surveillance. I think Facebook is a worse custodian in that regard. But the question is, do we want a custodian? And I think the answer to that question is no, for a number of reasons. One is that Google’s internal culture has shifted and will shift, and it’s not an organization that we have any sort of democratic oversight of, so trusting it to attend to the long term health of something as important as the Internet is a really bad idea.
This is the right way to start thinking about policy questions. Thinking about policy questions in an immediate, utilitarian way where all your asking is how does this affect the next 10 minutes gets you into a world of trouble. And thinking about what does the future of the web look like in five years if we allow one company to decide which adtech vendor is acceptable, that’s a lot more important and it doesn’t look good no matter who is the broker.
Is there anything consumers can do to push back against the increasing control over the web being exerted by companies like these?
In terms of how consumers can resist, some of this is above the paygrade of individual purchasing choices. Choosing what to buy or which ad blocker to use only gets you so far. Social change happens as a consequence of the combination of code, laws, and norms of markets. That is to say: what is technologically possible, what’s profitable, what’s considered right, and what’s legal? When you reach the end of what you can change through making purchasing decisions you need to look at making changes in some of those other ways.
Ad blockers are a great intervention on the code side. Changing what is technologically possible for users on the web changes what is profitable for people who make the web and who run businesses on the web. The way we got rid of super invasive pop-up ads was the introduction of pop-up blockers, not through a law that banned them. It may be that if we can’t change this by making purchasing decisions, we can change this by making technological decisions and if we can’t make it by making technological decisions because, say, Apple and Google are going to meet us halfway with ad blockers that block ads that aren’t hostile to them as well as some wider public interest, than maybe the right way to do it is with changes to the law. And, as we have seen recently with the EU, there is a newfound and rather surprising appetite to use the law to curtail these bad outcomes of people trying to dominate the web and the Internet.
What role do tools like AdBlock and other privacy and ad blocking tools play in this landscape?
There are limits to how far any of the platforms like Facebook or Google will go in ad blocking. Their version of a fair compromise is not necessarily a typical user’s version of a fair compromise. One of the roles these tools play is to keep the platforms honest. The existence (or the potential existence) of a company like AdBlock means that to the extent their compromise actually does something useful for users instead of just providing a band-aid, that is something that depends on them worrying that if they don’t a good job, a company like yours will get the upper hand. It keeps them from steamrolling everyone.
How do you feel about ad blockers from your perspective as an editor of Boing Boing, one of the web’s very early — and still very popular — blogs?
I have to wear a long-term hat and a short-term hat and an activist hat and a business owner hat to make sense of this. In the short term, Boing Boing does not have not a whole ton of leverage over our advertisers about what kind of ads they place on the website. We used to have a lot more leverage. Things we used to say were deal-breakers cannot be deal-breakers any more because we need them more than they need us.
So, putting on my long-term hat both as an activist as well as a business owner, the existence of things like ad blockers is really the only leverage we have over publishers any more because we can say it’s not that we object to this, it’s that your ads just don’t show up unless they are served up in a way that is more privacy preserving.
We are now in this position where we are waiting for better ad tech companies to pop up to make the pitch to people that “we aren’t blacklisted by the ad blockers but we only accept ads of a certain sort but we do get way higher penetration, so please come advertise with us and we will offer our services to people like Boing Boing.” And that is a much longer wait and it’s an open question that the amount of business we will lose to ad blocking will basically take us over the cliff before someone comes along and delivers something better.
I don’t think we can roll back the tide on people caring about privacy or people blocking ads — nor would I want to — but I do think that maybe we can accelerate the rate at which people are concerned about the privacy and security implications of ads. It is a real problem.
https://blog.getadblock.com/google-facebook-and-the-ad-block-wars-9322b732fafc?gi=9d23c563576c