> I don't actually know, but it's a weird moral problem, something feels not quite settled about the two typical responses on this topic... I totally agree wit

> I don't actually know, but it's a weird moral problem, something feels not quite settled about the two typical responses on this topic... I totally agree with you, this is an awkward topic because advertising itself raises moral questions. The problem is exactly what you said, we're all destroying the web by being terrible consumers. We're used to an internet where we do not generally have to pay for content, and that has led to a culture where paying for online content is almost unthinkable. This is a problem of our own making, but here we are. People pretty much universally hate ads, but almost no one hates them enough to actually hand over money instead. We know this because of the failure of things like flattr and the experiences of developers on app stores - if you offer a free ad-supported version of an app, and a paid version which removes the ads, only a tiny, tiny percentage of users are going to choose the paid version. And this is in an ecosystem where products usually cost less than a cup of tea and you can pay with almost no effort - it's literally easier than finding the equivalent cash amount in your pocket. People just don't do it. I don't have an answer to this. What I do know is that quality content costs money to produce and therefore we need a way for content producers to be rewarded for their work. Right now just about the only way that works on a large scale is with ads, and even that works poorly for most cases. Some people reading this will say to themselves "well, I'd pay for content". Congratulations on being an outlier, most people are not like you. Some people reading this will say to themselves "well, the free market will solve this problem", and that might be the case in the long term, but it will have terrible consequences for content producers in the short term and will fundamentally change the web. You might hate ads, but do we really want the series of walled gardens that an ad-less internet would necessarily devolve into? If everyone blocked ads, things like Google would have to become paid services. What kind of social inequality would that lead to in the long term? Obviously this is related to game theory. Blocking ads makes sense on an individual level, but if everyone does it we're all screwed. It's not a solution to the problem, it's going to cause more problems, and that's why I don't do it.