That's literally the web: the entire thing is a free ride, because if you put data online, you knowingly and willingly agreed to the fact that serving that data

That's literally the web: the entire thing is a free ride, because if you put data online, you knowingly and willingly agreed to the fact that serving that data up from your server to visitors means that data is free. That's the fundamental basis of the web. And if you don't like that, and you don't want visitors but customers, stick your content behind a login. What data you serve is up and how you do that is to you, you fully control that, but what happens once that data is on a user's computer is up to them. Because now it's in their house, not yours, and they get to decide what to do with it, not you. If a site can't exist without ads, you have some thinking to do as site owner, but you don't get to yell about how I parse and render the data you send without charging for it. Ads are not "part of the deal", they just something you slapped on in the hopes that someone else's obtrusive content makes you some money, by the grace of that someone else. No deal, kid.