[Klathmon]

See, I don't think you are morally obligated to "view" any ads, just that you shouldn't block them.

I don't generally mute the tv during ads, but i will fast forward sometimes if i'm watching a recording. And while I don't think anyone should feel obligated to view ads, blocking them deprives the content creators of income, which means a bigger push for other forms of income which I feel are pretty much universally worse (paywalled content, native advertising, in-form advertising which is non-targeted and quickly out of date, etc...).

It's a bit of a fine line i guess. Blocking them outright is too far, but scrolling past them without looking is more than fine.

It's kind of weird, and i'll be the first to admit that it might be hypocritical to say that, but it's what i feel.

But as for a "solution" (but obviously not a perfect one), I've found Google Contributor to be a fantastic service. It's a system that basically lets you "bid" for advertising space the same way the ads do, and if you "win" the bid, you don't see an ad and a portion of your monthly fee goes to the site owner.

[douche]

The fact of the matter is, if I can wget a website, and run it through some regexps to strip whatever I damn well please out of it, it's really not justified to get high and mighty about me doing the same thing with a web browser.

So long as I have control of my internet connection, and am responsible for paying for the bandwidth that it downloads, I have the right to block malicious or simply unwanted domains and ips. No, I do not consent to download your 8MB uncompressed ad images, or your 35 MB auto-playing videos, terrible website.

[tremon]

See, I don't think you are morally obligated to "view" any ads, just that you shouldn't block them.

And if ads were purely static images, served from the same source as the article, you would have a valid point. But as it is, not blocking ads leaks possibly identifying information (e.g. [1]) to untrusted (by me) third parties.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/570534/