Content Blocking Primer

Fantastic post from Eric on how the mass appeal of content blockers has given the web a mulligan. There’s a lot of great content in his post, but I’ll just share this one emblematic passage:

Remember, this isn’t just about ads. Ads are emblematic of the root problem, but they’re not the actual root problem. If ads were the sole concern of content blockers, then the blockers (mostly) wouldn’t bother to block web fonts. It’s possible to use web fonts smartly and efficiently, but most sites don’t, so web fonts are a major culprit in slow mobile load times. The same is true for Javascript, whether it’s served by an ad network, an analytics engine, or some other source. So they’re both targeted by blockers—not for enabling ads, but for disabling the web.