[jjjensen90]

I don't love ads but that is a pretty poor and dramatic analogy... It's more like eating a free buffet and the host asks you to listen to his annoying friends while you eat... Some of them write notes about you and share it amongst themselves... I'm not sure this is really an ethical grey area for you or just rationalizing it into grey area. If the website you are reading completely relies on ad revenue to pay its employees then it is pretty black and white that blocking the ads is not "ethical." If you really object to the ad model then you should do as the parent said and block websites which are ad-driven.

I've also worked at multiple publishing companies and I can tell you that although their owned and operated websites were run with ad money, none of the people involved had a thirst for human dignity. It is more like, we all wanted to make a living and enough people simultaneously wanted to read the content AND didn't mind the ads enough to click away. Any time I've seen subscription or pay per content tried at publishers I've been with it fails dramatically because the percentage of willing readers is just too small unless you are a very niche and valuable or very large and famous publisher.

[DerekL]

> It's more like eating a free buffet and the host asks you to listen to his annoying friends while you eat...

That already exists: a church-operated soup kitchen.

[atmanthedog]

I see adblocking as ethically justified because at the end of the day, I am only using my browser to ask for a resource from the content provider, and it is up to my computer, or by extension, the user controlling that computer, what to do with that resource if it is then provided.

If I put a piece of electrical tape physically over the ad on my monitor, I am effectively blocking the ad, but in this case the content provider gets to lie to their sponsor and say the ad made an impression, which just pushes the cost onto the sponsor. The ethics haven't really changed yet it is absurd to suggest that I am not free to put tape on my monitor.

I think it is hard to say that I am ethically obligated to pay attention to the ad just because a content provider unconditionally gave me something I asked for. The choice for content providers then, is to be like the WSJ, and simply quit giving away content unconditionally. If the content can't support itself that way, well, so be it. If no one was willing to pay for the content, doesn't this necessarily imply literally nothing of value was lost?