If you're ok with blocking ads, I don't see how allowing companies to pay a fee to have them unblocked hurts anyone. If it feels icky then maybe ad blocking is icky.
> If you are a large company (how exactly that's defined isn't clear), you need to pay to get your unobtrusive ads whitelisted.
Yeah that's a pretty clear conflict of interest, isn't it?
And it's violated right there with Google because the type of tracking ads that Google Ads are shouldn't have been allowed. For a non-paying party. As long as they stay true to their self-imposed rules for "acceptable ads".
Or perhaps the ads themselves are the icky part, and internet complacency in finding other business models is the problem
Couldn't be further from the truth. Ad revenue is icky by itself, in nearly any form. The fact that an industry sprung up to counter it (ad block software) points to the fact that the general public likely agrees with that.
If you don't feel that the psychological tracking and trickery of John Q. Public in order to sell him a new toilet paper holder is 'icky', then I don't know what to tell you. I do, and it seems many others share my feelings.