Ad blockers still remove them. They have tried not to and the users intentionally moved to ad blockers that still did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_...

Yes, because Adblock Plus did it in the shadiest possible way imaginable. From the Wikipedia page:

> * In February 2013, an anonymous source accused Adblock Plus developer Wladimir Palant of offering to add his site's advertisements to the whitelist in return for one-third of the advertisement revenue.[68] In June 2013, blogger Sascha Pallenberg accused the developers of Adblock Plus of maintaining business connections to "strategic partners in the advertising industry", and called ABP a "mafia-like advertising network".[69] He alleged that Adblock Plus whitelisted all ads coming from "friendly" sites and subsidiaries, and promoted their product using fake reviews and pornography.[70] Faida responded to Pallenberg's accusations, stating that "a large part of the information concerning the collaboration with our partners is correct", but that the company did not see these industry connections as a conflict of interest.*

"We'll whitelist acceptable ads. Btw, acceptable means 'willing to pay us a kickback'".

The move on Adblock Plus did nothing to make me safer, so of course I ditched them for a more secure solution. Of course, it's Adblock Plus's goal and right to try to make a revenue, but I don't owe them the continued use of their product.

And I absolutely reject the premise that I owe every website that's willing to send a 200 OK response the right to run arbitrary javascript in my browser. If you don't want me 'mooching' your content, fine - put up a paywall.

Also, aside from the two HNers who claim they actually do, nobody is turning off their adblocker as they go to see if a given site has acceptable ads.

"Sir, I know the last seventeen hundred cups I've offered you were full of piss, but surely this time I'm being honest and genuine!"

Is there a blocklist that permits acceptable ads?

How big/relevant is the adblock user market segment?

Also, flattr and other micropayment sites could/would work. Just as patreon and other subscription methods.

After all paid-via-unskippable-ads is the inverse of consumed-without-payment. Both are the extremes of the spectrum and the majority of users probably would stop visiting/consuming if they were forced to look at the ads for a significant amount of time.

I mean TV channels probably spent hundreds of millions on trying to maximize ad time while keeping viewers. (And now YouTube too.)

But of course there will always be a segment that will be very bothered by ads. (Hence the success of Netflix.)