It's as morally equivalent as muting the tv/changing the channel/averting your eyes or attention when a commercial comes on. It only gets fuzzy when you start

It's as morally equivalent as muting the tv/changing the channel/averting your eyes or attention when a commercial comes on. It only gets fuzzy when you start to argue about how surveillance capitalism let's them deny payment when ads are avoided on a Web browser but not when they are avoided with television. But "I don't get paid because they spy on you and the process more effectively than in other mediums" is already far more morally dubious. And at the end of the day, brand or product awareness is only one part of the reason for an advertisement to exist - and the reason to pay for someone to run your ad. Another big part is an expectation that users will click on the ad, that they may buy the thing. So I take even more moral umbrage with content creators who show ads and argue that users should have to view them and are bad for not doing so even if they knowingly will not click or buy them; the content creator tacitly acknowledges that they are fine with only delivering part value to the advertiser while receiving payment in full. At that point it becomes "I am mad at my readers/viewers for being parasitical with me instead of helping me be parasitical with the advertiser" and any arguments about morals have become bunk. So... unless they also demand that every user should fully read each ad and at least click on them in good faith with an open mind to open the wallet, I see it as a bit hypocritical to question the morality of Adblock users.