I used to think this was a tiny minority, too. But a key takeway from https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-n... was this statistic: "26% of Internet users are now blocking ads." Its a minority, but its not tiny.

Very, very probably only to declutter their screen. Does the survey collect intent about why they install it?

I doubt anywhere near 26% block ads because of tracking. I doubt even 1% if users even understand what tracking means.

I doubt that even 1% of internet users understand the extent of the PII that is collected. I would guess if the general public understood how all this worked, there would be many more people who objected to the practice.

Many of them probably also didn't set the ad blocker up themselves - they have tech-savvy relatives handle their computer stuff, and those tech-savvy relatives have realized that fewer ads means fewer malicious social engineering ads means less malware to remove during the next visit.

It's only my personal opinion, but I don't care at all about tracking. They can track me all they like. I block ads because they make my browsing slow, cause my CPU to turbo boost, interrupt my browsing, clutter the web pages excessively. I suspect a huge majority of that 26% is similar to me in this.

Where do you get the impression that it's a minority?

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/most-americans...