Of course. And I’ll continue to do so as long as advertisement is detrimental to my online experience. If it wastes my time by forcing me to watch an ad before a video, if it distracts me from reading a text because of animations, if it tries to scam or shock me, I’m better off blocking it. I’m not against advertisement as communication that a useful product or service exists, I’m against advertisement abuse and greed.

I’ll happily pay for, donate to, or otherwise support services important to me that need and deserve it.

I use AdBlock (and SponsorBlock on YouTube, and a cookie whitelist and a JavaScript whitelist) because only I decide what to see on my screen.

If you, as a creator, choose to use advertising to monetize your content you don’t respect the limited lifetime of the people consuming your content or their security or about the way the marketing and advertising industry is destroying our society, such as (not exhaustive, just off the top of my head right now)

• building a surveillance economy, destroying privacy in the process
• manipulating people into voting in certain ways that are harmful to them and others
• protecting harmful products from scrutiny (e.g. tobacco, alcohol, products with too much sugar or fat or low quality ingredients, the car and oil industries, corporate climate change denial,…)
• encouraging overconsumption both in terms of quantity and in terms of items or services they don’t really need
• destroying content platforms with their mantra “not advertiser friendly”, leading to dystopian self-censorship on e.g. Youtube

And then there is the way internet advertising can spread malware and compromise the security of websites in general.

If you do want to monetize content in other ways there are models such as subscriptions or Patreon-style that are a lot more respectful of the user.

I have been with this idea for a very long time. But over time all the platforms got more and more greedy and I had the feeling that my privacy got more and more invaded.

Since that time, I have an Adblock and use DDG.

Sorry content creators.

deleted by creator

Adblockers are absolutely necessary because ads are a malware threat, never mind the scams and invasive popups. The cReAtOrS didn’t care enough to ensure advertisements were safe, legitimate, or not horribly obnoxious so they did it to themselves.

I used to allow ads for certain sites but after malware attempts and scam ads, I block them across the board. If that upsets anybody, go whine to the shady advertises who made this a necessity to browse the web safely.

Yes, because I don’t like subjecting myself to propaganda and having to hope I’m smart and strong enough to recognize it and avoid succumbing to it.

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.” - banksy

Well if I want to support creators, I would rather give them my money directly either by buying their merch or any payment plarform.

Nowadays ads are so intrusive. Also the way ads are delivered by knowing what I prefer is capitalistic at its finest. Not everything that I search are something I want to buy.

Lmao what a stupid argument. If you want money paywall your content and see how many people really want to see it. You do not have the right to fill anyone’s head with manipulative garbage propaganda just because you made a video about how much you love the second reich and want it to retvrn or wrote some shitty blog post.

People that call themselves CONTENT creators are the people churning out pure garbage for the bazinga-brained sake of contentcontentcontent and the quality of actually worthwhile shit would skyrocket if they would all just collectively quit because what would be leftover are the people who actually care and aren’t in it for some ad views.

Artists, critics, musicians, designers, etc etc? They don’t call themselves content creators like the bazinga-brained influencers in it purely to chase metrics. Tell the bazingas to fuck off.

• I don’t like getting bombarded with ads.
• It hides scam ads.
• If the creator of something makes something I like I prefer to directly donate to them instead of giving up my privacy, and letting a company like google profit of it, and then they only give a small portion to the creator.

Counter point: Any creator blindly putting random ad networks on their site doesn’t care about their users. Every ad should be vetted and served by the creator, those kinda ads are impossible to mass-block. If an ad swindles a user, it should be the creators reputation thats at stake.

I stopped having a bad conscience for blocking when one blog who begged promised to not autoplay any audio. The very next day it of course showed a very loud ad, and the creator excused it with “he didn’t have any control over what the advertisement network showed”.

yes because fuck ads

I own my computer, and I control what is displayed on it. I can do anything I want to control what is and isn’t on my screen. It is not my problem if the majority of content is reliant on an ineffective monetization method.

I do wish someone would make an ad block that faked impressions. But it would probably lose the advantages of fast load times, security etc.

Yes I use an ad blocker. With some sites I visit, not having an ad blocker could mean the difference between my computer being destroyed by malware or saving myself by not clicking on malicious ads/full screen non-visible ads.

Also, if the content is coming from someone or some entity I am fairly certain doesn’t need my monetary support, why should I bother seeing ads? That’s just them leaching off me like a parasite. If I want to support a(n) person(s) and/or entity, I’d rather go as direct in helping find them as I can (such as through pateron or some other way).

As the de facto IT guy for my family, I block ads on all their computers just as a basic safety measure.

I can usually spot a fake download button and avoid scammy sites, but my parents and grandparents seem magnetically attracted to them