There is nothing at all unethical about preventing the most intrusive and annoying advertising practices. Allowing advertisers to auto-play music is a terrible

There is nothing at all unethical about preventing the most intrusive and annoying advertising practices. Allowing advertisers to auto-play music is a terrible idea for publishers, because it damages our relationship, but we have to cope with an imperfect world. And ultimately a browser is my reading platform on my computer in my home. I have no obligation to auto-play some hideous advertising jangle on it because I wrongly trusted some link and opened it under the current tab on Firefox. This is no more theft than is using a subway fold to skip the ads in the NYT print edition. Readers always skip the ads, it's just more evident in digital. Though to be fair, over the years I've mostly avoided the most intrusive ads by failing to install Flash. Readers have a direct relationship with publishers. Advertisers have a direct relationship with publishers. But readers do not have the direct relationship with publishers, and indirect access to readers is what the advertisers is paying the publishers for.