There is at least one other reason for adblocking: ads - even those on reputable sites - have been used to spread malware. Blocking ads thus is like using a condom, where your partner has insta-sex with hundreds of others the moment you get undressed.

Not "it is better", but "you'd be insane not to".

Secondly, I've never ever heard of a case where the site showing the malvertisements offered any sort of compensation to their victims. If that's how sites like to see the ads, all profits to them and zero responsibility, I see absolutely zero problems with adblocking.

Ad-blocking can be justified as the digital equivalent of averting your gaze, although I agree that's a bit tenuous as it's preventing the ad from rendering in the first place. It's marginal. But by analogy, it's like putting your TV on mute when the ads are playing - the producer made the show freely available expecting ad consumption.

But using a tool to get past a paywall is different. The show is not on TV, it is more like a rental without ads - and this tool is used to pick the lock to the rental store and then take all the rentals you want without paying.

I guess I agree that blocking the ads is worse than averting your gaze, actually. It prevents the producer ever getting revenue. But at least that's a risk they knowingly take with that funding model - paywall aversion is clearly not.

...yet!

> But by analogy, it's like putting your TV on mute when the ads are playing - the producer made the show freely available expecting ad consumption.

The difference is that you need to actively mute your TV every time! You're probably not going to do it for every commercial break, and even if you do, you'll likely catch at least a bit of the first ad. It's really that first ad's fault for not grabbing your attention quickly enough while it had the chance.

Put another way, the advertiser is paying for ad space, and it's the advertiser's responsibility to use that space in a way which catches your attention. Whether the advertiser succeeds or fails is nobody else's problem. An adblocker, however, completely removes the ad space.

TIVO has had the ability to skip ads for about 20 years now IIRC. I have a bandwidth cap on Comcast and don’t want ads to count, however insignificantly, against that. I also don’t trust JS and companies from ad networks to respect my privacy or keep data they collect about me safe. I’d rather (and I do) just black hole route all their junk from known ad networks on a DNS level and let ublock handle anything that does manage to sneak through. If they’re going to go through the trouble of making that not work, they’re probably not worth my time visiting.

> TIVO has had the ability to skip ads for about 20 years now IIRC.

Does TIVO skip automatically, though? I know that when Dish tried to do that in 2015, the TV networks sued. Don't remember who won, but I'd personally be somewhat sympathetic to the TV networks.

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It's not about you. Websites are selling a product for a price; you're jumping the turnstile and saying it's okay because the fare was too high anyway. By all means, don't visit websites with overly intrusive ads, let the the price and demand curves even themselves out.

Or, if you do block ads—because I get it, the world is imperfect—at least acknowledge that what you're doing isn't entirely ethical or fair, and stop encouraging others to do the same.

This is usually a topic I try to avoid on HN because it feels like such a loosing battle, but somehow I walked into this one. :)