[Stupulous]

How far do you take this point? Because the social expectation is not just that you allow the ads to be served, but that you read/watch them and that they increase the likelihood of you buying the products/services being advertised. Is it immoral for me to ignore the ads that I allow them to display on my computer? And if not, what is the difference apart from the effort I'm putting in?

[oriolid]

I think the normal expectation would be that the advertiser pays for the ads being shown together with the content you're really interested in, and it's the advertisers' problem if the ads produce any value for them.

[chrisseaton]

No I don't agree with this - the expectation is that the ads are there. Whether they're successful or not is their problem.

[Stupulous]

This feels like an arbitrary line to me. The host expects the ads to be rendered, and that's my problem. The advertiser expects their ads to be viewed, but that's their problem. What's the distinction?

Is it that I'm only in an implicit social contract with the person serving the content I want? Then it would be morally fine for me to block ads as long as I trick advertisers into thinking I didn't- the host only cares about whether they get paid. And what about on YouTube or Instagram, where the advertiser is the host? Google expects me to view their ads, not just render them, and I'm definitely in a social contract with them.

Or is it that they are allowed to stake a moral claim on the content of my browser, but not on my attention? Then I'd be allowed to block full-screen ads that force me to find an X, or autoplaying ads with sound, as they are forcing me to give them something they have no right to. And if I had an attention deficit disorder or a shopping addiction, all ads would be in that category. Even without such things, every ad accesses my attention without my consent, even if it's just the attention required to ignore them.