post #12: adblock, the internet, and sites of control

preface: while I was collecting my thoughts for this, it seemed like there could be some incongruities in terminology. I'm not that familiar with digital studies or whatever the associated field would be, so I don't know what terms people are using for to refer to different iterations of things. The motivation for this post is that I was thinking about adblock and felt it might be an instance where a person's relations to advertisements on the internet is more negotiable than it is in other contexts. In saying this, however, my thoughts immediately richocheted to the confined volatility of online games and game servers. These controlled ecologies generally can't be interfaced with any kind of adblock. My availability heuristics are of companies like Ubisoft and EA, which use isolate players on their servers and push predatory microtransactions.

     If I want to say that adblock represents something positive about a mode of engaging on the internet, it would be helpful to distinguish what it is that different about adblock applicable environs from isolated server spaces. As with most all things, there isn't a discrete binary between these spaces. That said, for the time being, I'll pretend that there are two modalities -- adblock applicable online spaces and non-opt outable ad having online spaces. (I focus on online because it's communication that in part happens on the end of the user's screen [on some level]; i feel like there's something in that localization that feeds into the types of relations online-mediated spaces can provide; the peer-to-peer-ness is what i'm gesturing at for what is potentially unique about online interaction). For the time being, I'll use "internet" to refer to spaces that can be adblocked and "server-sided" to refer to spaces that can't (which also have ads).

[^^ drawing of the uBlock origin icon, i guess threatening to shoot you ^^]

      My hypothesis, as I mentioned above, is that adblock is a means of disrupting digital capital (or at least resisting it). That web sites don't want you to use adblock (evinced by the popups you get when visiting, for example, certain news sites when using certain adblock extensions) is evidence only of that adblock threatens the monetary model that most web spaces are built on. This is because adblock is free software made by people to share with others to improve their quality of life (shared interest of a people to resist the interests of a capital owning class). As for the model I mentioned, it's characterized not only by the presence of advertisements in various forms as interventions onto the experience of using the web page (rather, this is the symptom), but also the preference for extracting value from users in ways that avoid requiring payment in the form of overtly symbolic value (money). While money is the most concentrated form of symbolic value in 2025, it is not the only iteration of symbolic value. Let's say value in this context is things which are produced via labor.

     As is likely well known by this point, it's common practice for web sites to use cookies and other extractive technologies to secrete information/data from users or other people that visit their sites. Within their monetary systems, these extracted resources are transformed (to varrying success levels) into capital; or, well, that's the end goal and desire. That web sites sell your data indicates that your data is valuable. If nothing else, the lengths to which companies and websites go to steal your personal information speaks to the extent to which the concentrated task of existing as a person (and more specifically, a person with habits and / or a history of actions and expressed desires) is labor.* While data may be valuable, it's value is not inherently capital value. Explicating the process which user browsing habits or personal information gets wrangled by companies or capitalists in the quest for making money is beyond the scope of this piece. (tbh i'm already well and truly erred of the path at this point lol).
*we can talk about different kinds of labor and that maybe we should have different words to sort these things out, but I don't really care to deal with that right now.

text to break up the flow... maaybe come back in the future to find an image

      In any case, browsing the internet *is* labor (in some shape for form). Most present day discussions of "the algorithm" inherently circle the drain on this issue. YouTube and Netflix need you to browse their sites in order to operate. (I use "you" here not in the singular/specific sense but in the general/plural -- the point is that these institutions need people to provide them labor). In the same way that Subway (the sandwich place) doesn't need you individually as an employee but needs employees generally. This is why organized labor is said to threaten capitalists, as through actions such as striking, laborers can withhold their labor from the workplace... and with high enough numbers, the capitalist is no longer able to profit as there is no longer value to skim off. (Case in point for why browsing the internet is likely a different kind of labor than food service -- I'm not sure what an internet-located strike would realistically look like). I'm not an economist or anything, but this is how I understand things -- that, in general, organizing is anti-capital. This is relavent because I argue that adblock is one instance of organizing against capital (though, importantly, of a much more passive variety).

      In general, web sites are incentivized not to let you use adblock. Furthermore, Google's creeping attempts to delegitimize adblocks and root out their efficacy from Chrome and Chromium browsers demonstrates that such desires remain constant even at higher levels of technological abstraction. While WIRED's desire as a web site for me to not use adblock when reading their articles matters, this desire only really becomes meaningful when put in the context of the wider desires and demands of digital capital -- a.k.a. the inscribed monetary systems. Adblock threatens to delegitimize digital capital's enterprise. In order to obscure the threat that adblock poses to capital, though, digital capital incentivizes web sites (read: middle managers) to confront the individual people that visit them while using an adblocker. "Please disable adblock :( we're losing all our money otherwise :'^(" The rhetoric of anti-adblock pop-ups frames the technology as harmful and holds the right to entry hostage until users agree to cede their rights to not seeing ads/not having their data harvested.

      Now, of course, the ultimate culprit in this is the system of capitalism itself -- one where money and/or income is the price to entry (and what you're entering is the right/ability to live -- to have food, and shelter, and other stuff). In the extent to which it matters, capitalism is the violent party, not adblock. Even presuming that my using adblock prevents someone else from making enough money to buy food, it's still ultimately the system which is violent (and which is trying to translate a chance individual action into a supreme moral failure). Plus, also, if you want to talk violence and things which realistically could intervene in someone's ability to live, I think it's much more believable to call advertisements a threat/dangerous than any kind of adblock. To be reductive so as to leave things here -- the case in point example would be gambling or drinking ads; while gambling isn't necessarily harmful, my sense is that people who've been severely harmed by gambling addictions are at a much higher number than those slighted by people using adblock. But I suppose maybe we can never truly know...

text to break up the flow... maaybe come back in the future to find an image

      The original point, I should get back to saying, is that compared to times square or a movie theater or some such, browsing the internet with adblock allows someone more of an option to not see ads. Adblock provides people terms (of negotiation) which are more localized and more controllable. You can't really opt out of billboards or other public image ads, but theoretically you can with digital ads via adblock. Similarly, if it's legitimate to compare between YouTube and movie theaters (no doubt this is a complicated comparison), then being on YouTube with adblock lets someone circumvent ads to a greater extent than is affordable in a movie theater. The main way to avoid ads in theaters is to disrupt the rhythm of spectatorship that the theater industry promotes for when and how long you should be there (i.e., if you arrive late and miss the previews).

      One thing it could be useful to compare would be: what are the ads present in these different places? My image of the archetypal theater advertisment is the trailers for movies that play before a feature starts. The general consensus for YouTube ads (which can be all manner of things, I'll touch on this later) is that people don't like sitting through them. Because of this, people frequently hover over the skip ad button until the second it becomes clickable, so that they can get back to the video as soon as possible. I don't actually have numbers, but this is what I do and this is what I've heard that other people do. Comparatively (using my mom as the example), my mom *loves* watching previews. She's expressed in the past that, if it were possible, she'd go to the theater to just watch trailers for two hours and be content to from there return home.

      I think it's probably important, within this whole discussion, to note that advertisements may have different functions depending on the place and time. In the case of the theater industry, trailers are fundamentally ouroborically oriented. Trailers are how the industry attempts to secure its longevity. They funnel the attention of paying spectators (people who are paying to come to this film; a more substantial cost than people who click on a YouTube video) into a kind of future-displaced cache/vye for credibility (read: previews are theaters attempting to translate the labor of spectatorship into value ... which they then hope to translate into capital when the spectators return in the future to pay the industry another visit). That previews tend to be of the same relative genre as the movie you're paying to see demonstrates this in a sense. As for YouTube... it's build different. In fact, YouTube's ad situation is so complex I can't confidently explicate it without giving a more detailed history in tandem (somethin beyond the scope of this piece). While theaters also have other ads beyond just previews (e.g., coca cola ads seem pretty common where I live), I think it's inarguable that the scope of the advertising ecology on YouTube completely eclipses the relatively self-contained theater advertising ecosystem. I mentioned YouTube's algorithm earlier, which is a prime example of how the personal profile created by and fed back into digital capital technology is used to inform what ads a person receives. The type of video someone clicks on also plays a role in what ads people see. Further, the economic standard currently has it that people often (on top of everything else) will take individual sponsorships/ad reads for their videos (what are a kind of targeted ad and a way in which capital attempts to circumvent adblock technology). I have many thoughts on much of this, but they are too garbled to try and assemble them further for now. (I'll leave it at this: the notion of an "adpocalypse," which was first proliferated in certain kinds of Gamer[tm] YouTube ecologies around 2016, demonstrates or speaks to a fascinating relation with advertisements, capital, and ... time?)

text to break up the flow... maaybe come back in the future to find an image

      To close (and maybe recenter a little bit), it is that adblock is not alone in what powers it offers people to arrest for themselves from the binds and suffocations of capital. Two near analogs that have also come to mind are the practices of, technologies for, and sites of piracy and torrenting. Like adblock, these are -- more or less -- peer-to-peer means of disrupting capitalist modes of control. Now, is it ironic that it's best practice to use an adblock when visiting many a pirate streaming site? Maybe... but the economics of server maintenance while violating copyright are a conversation for another day.