[annabellish]

>TOS are enforceable to some degree

You cannot state "by reading this notice you have accepted our terms and conditions". Maybe - _maybe_ - you could force people to register and explicitly agree to your terms which specify that you may not view the page without also loading the ads, though I think such a clause would be immoral.

The ability to control what code executes on one's computer is a fundamental freedom of general purpose computing. I don't feel that it's any more appropriate to demand I load ads than to demand I load your images or your css, or indeed to demand I install your bitcoin miner.

Ads from even the major networks are damaging to run far too often to be considered safe. They're resource intensive and a common malware vector. Whether or not it is _legal_ to block ads (it is), it is certainly not immoral to choose not to execute code which has a high likelihood of compromising your device's security - this being the tool many people use for everything from personal communications to financial transactions. The idea that one should compromise that security for the sake of your blog is ridiculous and a strong sign that the ad-driven business model of the web is neither sustainable nor ethical.

[darawk]

> Maybe - _maybe_ - you could force people to register and explicitly agree to your terms which specify that you may not view the page without also loading the ads, though I think such a clause would be immoral.

What moral rule exactly does that contravene? You can simply not load their content. What gives you the right to load their content on terms other than theirs?

[orwin]

Hopping into this. The GDPR ask just that: if you are using ad networks, you should ask your user to give his explicit consent for each network you are serving him. Note that if you are serving malware, you are responsible and can be fined, which is pretty fair, imo.

[flukus]

> What gives you the right to load their content on terms other than theirs?

They gave me the right. I sent a request for the content, they sent me the content. If they would like to add additional terms then they should do so before they send me the content.

[annabellish]

That is what the rest of my post goes on to discuss, I believe. _All_ content loaded onto somebody's general purpose computer is loaded on their own terms.

[ryandrake]

By reading this content, you agree to record yourself doing 10 jumping jacks and reply to this message with the link to the video. If you don’t agree to these terms, you may not load this content or read it.

[alex_young]

> What gives you the right to load their content on terms other than theirs?

robots.txt for one thing.

[TeMPOraL]

robots.txt is a gentlemen's agreement between a site and search engine running automated crawlers. It has no meaning for regular visitors.