randombits

YouTube would dry up and blow away. The vast majority of people use YouTube precisely because it's "free". Google can afford to allow YouTube to remain free.

I block all ads. Full stop. I also whitelist a trimmed set of websites to allow logins. I disallow HTTP/S referrer, DOM storage, WEBRTC, and whole host of other things. I have not seen an ad in years, I have not suffered malware in years, my bandwidth is my own, not to be used for ad servers to serve up their dreck.

The morality surrounding ad blocking is up for debate, but I do not feel guilty because there is no OBLIGATION for me to view ads. Just because you serve them up does not mean I need to view them. I don't view ads on TV, live or DVR'd. I don't look at roadside billboards or look at magazines because they contain too many ads.

I don't like being tracked, seen as a means of income by fly-by-night operations, a target for malware because the ad server operators are too lazy to secure their servers because there is no ROI in server security. In short, I have a right to protect my precious bandwidth and my computers whilst on the Web.