[nik282000]

Up until about 2019, I did not block ads. I felt that the ads a site or service chooses to run was a pretty good way to gauge whether I wanted to continue to use that site or service, and ads are what cover the operating costs.

Over 20 years I got to watch a HUGE change in the ecosystem of advertising, starting with static imaged baked right into the page and transparent pop-overs at the bottom of YouTube videos. If an operator used horrendous popups, un-muetable audio, or other adversarial tactics I would generally just not use them, the internet is a big place, I can shop around.

By 2019 it got to the point that nearly every operator was using ads so large and offensive that nearly every website was unusable. Even YouTube had moved to multiple, sequential, un-skippable, mid-roll ads that made the viewing experience worse than cable. I installed a browser extension and set up a pihole.

I do however feel like this leaves things broken. There are very obvious holes in pages that look like some developer spammed line breaks randomly throughout the page. If operators moved back to static images or animated banners I would honestly prefer it to the disjointed look you get with no ads at all.