There are a few sites that don't work at all with an adblocker, and those sites I'm happy to not visit again. But the whole "consent by default" is not a valid interpretation of consumer law in the EU, whether you phrase it as freeloading or not.
In fact, my browser is muted by default, and I always mute TV commercials (used to have a mythtv plugin for it, even). Are you now going to accuse me of stealing for protecting the silence of my own home?
1. You know that most of the web's content is paid for with ads.
2. You've installed an ad-blocker to prevent them from loading.
3. You didn't see them when you do so it doesn't count.
That's a funny argument, right there. You could just as easily cover your eyes as you're driving through traffic and make the same argument. However, you knew what would be ahead of you, the significance, and made the decision anyway for selfish reasons. Fine if you do as I run an adblocker, too.
Strange that so many pretend like they aren't ripping off sites giving them content or a huge uptake of this wouldn't damage those same sites. Why do you keep pretending?
"In fact, my browser is muted by default, and I always mute TV commercials (used to have a mythtv plugin for it, even). Are you now going to accuse me of stealing for protecting the silence of my own home?"
Did you blank the content that the ads paid for, as well? Or just your end of the arrangement? I'm accusing you of talking content while blocking what pays of it. If it's not stealing, it's something very similar.
Many ads are visual or textual, though, so I'm not sure why you're bringing up the silence of your home as a counter to all ads except as a reframing of the discussion to make your ad-avoidance seem more sensible. Realistically, you don't care if they loose money and go out of business so long as you get the content with little to nothing in return. That's your actual position.
Besides, the cash flow for ad monetization is so convoluted that it would be very hard to conclusive demonstrate financial harm by my actions.
The problem I have isn't so much that I'm worried about ads, or entirely anti advertising. It's that online advertising has reached the point where it's too annoying not to block it. The amount of ads I was seeing outweighed the value I got from the content, so I block them all.
To be clear, I block them too for their annoyance and malware risks they pose. I push for solutions to that (eg Adblock's Acceptable Ads, ADsafe). Well, some like Youtube I let through because they're easy enough to ignore (esp with mute button). Amazon and eBay have those, too. On rare occasions, it's actually something I'm interested in. The rest are blocked by default. And you won't catch me lying about essentially ripping them off until they ditch their annoying, dangerous BS in favor of acceptable ads or option to pay.
Note: One thing I miss about late 90's and early 2000's Internet is that there were tons of good subscription, services plus "all on a CD" paid content. Our modern stuff is more fun and diverse for sure but innovative efforts like Patreon show there's room for improvement in ads vs paid.
When I click on a link I have no idea what is behind it. If every link had some pointer-hover stats that popped up to tell you that it will be making X requests and X amount of data will be downloaded it would be possible for users to make informed decisions. Instead we click a link and pray that we don't get socked with malware from an ad network.
Every link click is executing unauthorized code in your browser sandbox.
And let's not forget that "news" on the internet today is simply "copying and pasting an entire article from another site, modifying the title to be clickbait, and waiting for the masses to consume your ads"
Websites with original content are not the ones trying to fuck over the users, and if they offered good pay-for content people would... pay for it!
All the thieves can go bankrupt for all I care.
You're a real, online adventurer if the links you click are so random that you have no idea what's on the other side. That means you religiously avoid sites like Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Facebook, etc where you understand what your getting and what's supporting it. The rest of us know what's behind some links and not others.
"Every link click is executing unauthorized code in your browser sandbox."
It's authorized because you clicked it knowing that. Whole web model is others supplying HTML and JS, at a minimum, to your browser without you knowing what's in it before hand. It's why I run sandboxing and isolation schemes. Anyway, you're more than happy to run all of it but the advertisements. So, clearly that isn't your real worry. :P
"And let's not forget that "news" on the internet today is simply "copying and pasting an entire article from another site, modifying the title to be clickbait, and waiting for the masses to consume your ads""
Given that, I guess you don't use news sites either. Means the hacker who is controlling your PC is also an avid reader of Hacker News. You might want to restore from backups and harden your system more. Adios.
I don't remember signing or agreeing to anything.
If their business fails, it fails.
The rest of you want to freeload and aren't getting the freeloading experience you desire. Feel free to try but be responsible enough to admit what you're doing. Otherwise, many services that are ad-supported can be replaced with paid ones with more privacy-focused ones than ever post-Snowden. There's also the alternative of not using what you won't pay for in attention to ads. If you're just getting robbed by ads, feel free to give up the content as it had no value to you and was a robbery rather than an exchange.