I would guess most people have this idea (in most cases illusion) that advertisers are not able to manipulate them. I do not have that illusion, and I do not like people that are manipulating me for their own benefit. I do not know if they are evil, but I think it is fair for me to try to avoid those kind of people.
I certainly don't pretend that advertising has no impact on me.
I also don't think I'm a mindless drone who does whatever advertisers say.
Advertising is not zero sum. It can be effective and good for the consumer. For example, I have Charles Schwab account because I once saw it in a magazine ad, did some research, and have been a happy customer ever since. Both Schwab and I won, even though they "manipulated" me into learning about their excellent offering.
> I do not have that illusion, and I do not like people that are manipulating me for their own benefit.
You should probably never leave your house then, because almost every person in the world is trying to (subtly) manipulate you. Manipulation isn't evil.
However, a lot of adverts are subterfuge these days and I did fall for one (to shame it, it was TrackR Bravo, which works nothing like its advertised, to make matters worse it was part of a present), so one does need to be careful.
This is a fine stance to have, but I don't see how it relates to the context of ad-blockers. It's a simple enough just to not visit websites that display advertisements. Why would you need an adblocker for that?
Because there are websites with content other than advertisements I am interested in.
Now, I think Facebook, Google, other advertisers and content providers using these ad networks have made the (moral) rules of the game quite clear. They try to extract as much net value from every transaction with me as is even remotely legally and technically possible. And they make massive investments on the technology that is trying to maximize this value extraction. Why should I feel bad playing by the same rules they have created?
(Note that in practice I am not as ideological as my arguments here are. I have e.g. chosen to disable the adblocker for some websites instead of paying for subscription to support them somehow. Reason for this is the fact that it is much easier to turn off the adblocker than hassle with payments.)
Honest question - don't the sidebar ads (on the right) on Facebook look ugly and intrusive to you (more so since they also change often)?
Apart from Facebook tracking, I block ads on Facebook because of these too.
Not at all. I honestly don't even understand how you could think they are.
They're literally just a (static) image and a few lines of text.
Heck, I often even find Facebook ads to be inherently valuable. Most of them are for services I use and like.
I'm a happy Adblock Plus user and I like this move.
Advertising, in general, does not bother me. I occasionally even find it valuable. Ads on sites like Google and Facebook are perfectly fine by me—I just don't want big, animated ads or (more frequently) broken ones which prevent me from reading content. In fact, I already go out of my way to disable ABP on sites where the ads are acceptable.
Contrary to what people on HN believe, advertising is not inherently evil. Most people are perfectly fine with ads so long as they're not invasive.