What It Is
AdBoost is a Chrome extension that adds ads to websites instead of removing them. Creator Taylor Troesh hardcoded satirical ads ("Insurance Insurance. Protect yourself against loss of insurance for $3500/month") that clearly aren't meant to generate revenue. It's satire - not malware, despite resembling the "ad injectors" Google complained about in 2015.
Why It Exists
Troesh frames it as breaking a spell: "Corporations wield dark magic against you; they want you to believe their advertisements are necessary and/or inevitable." The extension highlights the ad economy's fundamental tension - publishers rely on ad revenue while browsers like Brave (96/100 ad-block score) and Avast Secure (100/100) integrate blockers by default.
The project has minimal traction (20 GitHub stars, 0 forks) and won't make Google's Chrome Web Store. Users must manually install it in developer mode.
The Real Context
This is performance art in a market dominated by actual ad-blockers. uBlock Origin's low memory footprint and AdBlock Plus's "Acceptable Ads" whitelist represent the industry's working answers. Opera claims 90% faster load times on ad-heavy sites with blocking enabled.
Chrome's Manifest V3 restrictions on extensions are squeezing traditional blockers, but tools like Total Adblock are finding workarounds. Meanwhile, publishers face existential pressure as blocking becomes default behavior.
What This Means
For enterprise tech leaders: nothing operationally. AdBoost won't affect your content strategy or ad tech stack. But it's a useful reminder of the creative tension between user experience and publisher viability - a tension your own digital properties navigate daily.
The ad economy isn't solved. Whitelisting and acceptable-ad frameworks are compromises, not solutions. We'll see if anyone finds a model that works for both sides.