The addition of ad blocking capability to iOS has brought on a lot of hand-wringing about whether it’s ethical to block ads in your web browser. Of course it is! Blocking ads is self preservation.

Ad networks act unethically. They inject huge amounts of garbage making pages load slowly and computers run poorly. They use aggressive display tricks to get between you and the content. Sometimes negligent ad networks serve outright malware. They violate your privacy without informed consent and have rejected a modest opt-out technology. Ad systems are so byzantine that content providers pay third parties to tell them what crap they’re embedding in their own websites.

Advertising itself can be unethical. Ads are mind viruses, tricking your brain into wanting a product or service you would not otherwise desire. Ads are often designed to work subconsciously, sometimes subliminally. Filtering ads out is one way to preserve clarity of thought.

I feel bad for publishers whose only revenue is ads. But they and the ad networks brought it on themselves by escalating ad serving with no thought for consumers. The solution is for the ad industry to rein itself way in, to set some industry standards limiting technologies and display techniques. Perhaps blockers should permit ethical ads, although that leads to conflicts of interest. Right now Internet advertisers are predators and we are the prey. We must do whatever we can to defend ourselves.