Content is not free to make, host, or distribute. I get that. Bandwidth costs money. Storage costs money. Time costs money. Everything costs money. I understand that. I am not some blue haired woke college activist that thinks everything should be free.
That said, I absolutely do not, nor should you, feel bad about using ad block. And I mean harsh ad block. Software, browser plugins, DNS sinkholes, and no I will not check the little box to "allow approved ads". It's all fair game. The reason being simply just how intrusive internet advertising has gotten, especially over the past decade.
If it were just a few picture banners along the boarders of a page, or a few clips stuck inside a video here and there, akin to TV commericals, I wouldn't block any of it. But unfortunately that's not good enough. They have to squeeze every cent they possibly can out of every single click, up to and including immorrally reselling whatever data they've collected in the process. It's disgusting. A 10 minute YouTube video interrupted by ads every two minutes? Obscene. Full video banner ads, with audio, that eat your bandwidth and play automatically? No way. Popups that get right in your face and obscure the text you're trying to read? Eat me.Trackers that follow you across websites and sell all your queries to the highest bidder? Yuck. Their greed has gotten inexcusable. This has gone beyond simply making a sustainable profit and so far into the realm of abuse that I put my foot down and say no.
Because these ad companies love the shock and awe approach of advertising overload, I am of the opinion that users are well within their right to have a zero-tolerance policy for this shit. Block them all. I don't even want to allow the "acceptable" ones anymore. Sorry, but they are collateral damage at this point. If it stops me from getting to the content, I find a way around the wall. If I can't find a way around the wall, I just simply don't consume that content. Again, I liken it to TV commercials. We're all used to those, but now imagine if they were every minute AND there were still big popups DURING THE SHOW, with audio.
Suck my dick. You're getting blocked. All of you, until you straighten out your attitude.
Again, I don't see this as anti-capitalist. Quite the opposite, actually, because if my data is so valuable to advertisers they need to start paying ME and getting it with my consent. If you want to extract data out of my habits to sell me stuff, you should be paying me for the intrusion into my life. Neilsen does it that way, they throw you a couple bucks when you fill out their surveys and send them back. I'm more than happy to do that. Not for the monetrary gain of a whopping <$5 sum, but because that is a fair and just model. Now I realize that polling people for their opinions is usually shit, because the truth is we are all predictable idiots who have no idea what we want until someone shows it to us. But if you want to track everything I do to sell stuff you should be paying me for that intrustion. You want to track my browsing habits? Be transparent. Send me your offer, then we'll talk. If you're going to do it whether I like it or not, then I'm not going to look at your ads.
Block them all. It might hurt a few content creators, and I'm very sorry about that, but these advertising companies need to be shown that their users are not the product.