The problem with ad blocker blocking

Here’s a photo of my morning workstation:

On the left, my iPad happily showing a news story about the presidential debates from last night – and the #kenbone hashtag in particular.

On the right, my MacBook Pro showing the same story – except it’s been blocked by anti-adblocking tech.

This is what is says:

The irony?

The iPad has an ad blocker installed.

The Mac doesn’t.

In their haste to punish people blocking ads, Deadline is actually excluding genuine visitors. And therein lies the problem with “ad blocker sniffing” tech – it doesn’t always work, and sometimes it throws false positives. And it inadvertently left me wondering if maybe I should have an ad blocker on my Mac, too.

This arms race will not end well for publishers.