It's always a good advice, but you're ignoring GP's point that I believe the discussion around ads should be focused on: that a lot of advertisers are malicious actors. They are bunch of liars who want to profit by hurting people, and this is somehow not only totally legal, but a respectable occupation.

My argument is the opposite. This isn't a respectable occupation. The respectable ones are exceptions. The main goal is to reduce all humans to just consumers.

Have ever you seen ads for kids? They must buy that toy! Happiness is eating unhealthy thing in McDonalds! And don't forget Camel: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/11/us/smoking-among-children-...

I wouldn't say advertisers are malicious actors: they are amoral ones. They want maximum short-term profit, and they don't care if they hurt people or not in the process.

You know, I cut the cord years ago and felt the same way, but increasingly, every video on the internet has forced pre-roll ads I can't escape from (especially when watching YouTube on iOS), and it feels WAY worse than TV ads ever did. There is no free lunch...

If you used Android, you could run Firefox with uBlock Origin, which blocks those ads.

Netflix was TV ad-blocking for me. I hated TV and stopped watching it for many years. Then when Netflix came around, I discovered that TV production had greatly improved, and it's the ad interruptions that was poisoning the art, making me feel sick to watch it. Without the ads, I could binge watch a multiple-year series of a television show, and not feel sick.

Meh, today's cable doesn't feel that different; I just start watching the show a bit later and fast-forward the ads at 32x.

Small reminder that cable's main selling point when starting out was the removal of ads.

Not around here (non-US country), it already came with ads. The point was always the extra content, since we only had four OTA channels.