Counterpoint: The checkout counter at the store doesn't follow me out into the parking lot, grab my license place number and sell it to whoever wants it, or follow me into other stores.

Definitely an unpopular opinion, though! Take my upvote.

• you pay the content creator by buying their content, not by browsing ads on their site – ads are a really annoying tip jar being waved in your face when you’re trying to hand money to the cash register
• advertisers have been given plenty of warning to behave themselves and they refuse, they are parasitic leeches bleeding both creator and purchaser
• adblockers are the effect, not the cause
  • original websites were ad free
  • banner ads were added and we tolerated them
  • advertisers then added in distracting flashing effects, loud audio cues, broke security with Flash, broke accessibility
  • adblockers invented
  • advertisers shed crocodile tears and pretend to be contrite
  • advertisers start pushing tracking, malware, phishing, crypto-miners
  • adblockers are now as important as antivirus for the safety of your computer/tablet/phone

Remember print magazines and newspapers? Ads pay a large portion of the costs of producing them, but no reader is obliged to look at any ads at all. Advertisers pay for a chance to be seen, not for an obligation for anyone to look at them. Since nobody has any obligation to read the ads, avoiding them cannot be a violation. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

Using ads is theft (of my precious lifetime).

Another translation of OP's opinion: walking on the street without looking at storefronts is unfair. Stores pay a substantial rent to be there and a lot of money to renovate and pay people to put up stuff for you to look at. Anyone not looking at these store fronts are robbing people of their money. There should be traffic stops where people have to describe exactly the location, size and content of every ads on the street. Failing to do so should be punished by law.

Ads are a hostile takeover of my time. No one is entitled to my time.

Ads are code, executed on my device. No one is entitled to running code on any of my devices.

Theft?

Methinks you don't know the definition of the words you use.

Even if it is - fuck 'em. 99% of websites use invasive scripting to track us, and they're clearly adversarial to us. Just read up on what Facebook has always done...think they're the only ones?

Website owners had a chance in the late 90's to treat users/consumers with respect, and chose to say "fuck you" instead, and since have doubled down on their attitude towards us.

Fine. You wanna play that way? I'll teach everyone I know how to use ad blockers and tools like DNS filters. I'll never buy something directly through your website, etc.

If you want to call ad blocking theft, then the delivery of ads is theft of my bandwidth, cpu time (electricity), and the invasive scripting/tracking is theft of my personal info.

How many boots do you lick in a day?

I don't agree, but thanks for posting an actually unpopular opinion. Based on the voting, this sub should just get renamed to popularopinion and be done with it.

Do you read every billboard on the road? After all they’ve paid for that patch of sky, what obligation do you have to glance that way without paying them the courtesy of processing their inane drivel. Ever see the same ad more than once? Me neither. Every time I see an ad, like a stupid, happy cow, I am entertained once again.

I wholeheartedly disagree with you. I am so confused. Do I upvote or downvote?

What about people who pay for their internet by data used, is the website not stealing from the user by wasting data with the unwatned ads?

I think I'd be ok with removing my ad blocker if ads were simple and non intrusive and creators actually got a decent chunk of the ad revenue. The reason I use it however is that most websites have proven that if you give them an inch they'll take a mile. So many websites now have so many ads that the actual content is barely visible through the mid-page ads, auto play videos, popups and banners. And that's not even mentioning the tracking and cookies they now request/use. The internet has become unusable without an ad blocker. If I want to support someone's content I'd rather use whatever donation method they have set up.

Only in the same way you're supporting the local economy by being pickpocketed. There are better and less shady ways of doing it.

It has been an unwritten agreement since forever (or at least as long as there have been ads on the web) that if you consume the content, you pay the creator by looking at the ads on their site.

Downvoted because this is objectively wrong.

I've been using the internet since the mid 90s, and there were very few ads then. The ads that did exist were mainly banner ads pointing to other sites, for example. Ad companies got wise to them and started posting their own ads, then started using invasive technology like popup ads and animated ads.

From the first time these types of ads were used, there have been complaints against them, and adblockers were developed.

At no point did I agree to view ads on the internet, and the vast majority of people only put up with them because they don't know that there's a way to get rid of them.

I would love to support sites by viewing their ads, but I object to the behind-the-scenes data transactions that are associated with ads. maybe I'll click, maybe not, but creating profiles of me that people sell is not acceptable.

If you've ever managed or monitored a corporate firewall, you're honestly doing yourself a disservice by not using an adblocker these days. The amount of malicious advertising that corporate firewalls block these days from employees on the internet is astounding.

Legitimate as traffic accounts are constantly hijacked by threat actors as its such an easy way to spread malware and compromise machines.

No ads for me thank you. I'd rather make a donation when the option is available, or pay a subscription if the price is fair.

If using a adblocker is theft then watching a commercial without buying the product is theft.

LOL

I used to like services that were ad supported because they allowed me to be frugal and engage without the hassle of digging my credit card out of my pocket.

But ads have gotten so much worse. (Even without considering the tracking implications.) So intrusive and heavy sometimes that I can't even access the content I'm trying to engage with. (And paywalls are just advertisements for the site hosting the content, only with more difficult requirements to get past.) And many streaming services and such have both ads and payments now-a-days.

That said, even before ads got "bad", I wouldn't agree with you, OP. It's my computer/smartphone/raspberry pi/gaming console/etc. That I bought with my own money. I should have the right to determine how it acts, just like I should be free to drive my car to the locations I want to visit and not the ones my car's manufacturer or repairer or whoever wants me to go to. I should also be free to modify my car as I wish (within the constraints that I don't do so in ways that make it a societal problem.) Were it technically feasible and I wanted to add a feature to my car that made the windshield block out all billboards (again, if it didn't cause problems like also blocking out things I as a driver need to be able to ensure I don't hit), well, I bought the car. It's mine. I should be able to do that if I like.

(And yes, that means I'm also not a fan of, for instance, the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions.)

So, if I want to modify the browser on my computer to display not the page the server sends me but an altered version with a different backgrount color or rearranged interface or no ads, it seems pretty bullshit to say that's not something I should be able to do.

The website is free to discontinue its website and switch exclusively to a print/magazine format such that ads can't be cut out without being viewed. (Though, if I were to build a machine that goes through a magazine and blacks out ads without me having to look at the magazine, they are free to switch to a model were you can only view their content on a medium they physically posess and own on their premises with an agreement that you won't modify the medium. There's no way I (nor I imagine any significant number of people) would go for... unless it was a museum or something. But the New York Times or whatever couldn't make that work as a business model, surely.) And if they can't do that and still be solvent, it's not my job to prop up their unworkable business model.

(I suppose this could lead to sites doing more to blend the ads into the content. Ad placements in the show or the ad is part of the content of the article you're reading. Which honestly is better in some ways than paywalls and annoying flashing bullshit on top of the content. And it's not like they aren't doing that already, nor like they'd stop if tomorrow everybody woke up and decided not to use ad blockers any more.)

But also, I have to admit I'm pretty much pro-shoplifting too. Not saying I've ever done it. (I almost got caught and chickened out and gave up trying to shoplift some toys once when I was like 8. Lol. Never shoplifted since.) But if I ever see someone shoplifting, no I fucking didn't. They're getting a thumbsup, a smile, a head nod, and maybe an offer to pay for what they're trying to take if I can do it without raising suspicion from the rent-a-pigs watching the cameras.

Anyway, I'd say this definitely qualifies as an unpopular opinion and you have my upvote.

Though, I'd be interested to know whether you, OP, personally have any reason to hold this opinion. Do you produce ad-supported content or benefit from ad revenue in any way?

Not sure if the opinion is popular or not, but only ⅓ of web users even use ad blockers.

That right here is the problem with communities like this one

OP made a perfect post for this community, an extremely unpopular opinion, and gets downvoted

I wish it was.

If that was the case I'd just F5 some companies into bankruptcy. Sadly, it's not.

Unpopular indeed.

Upvoted for unpopular. check the sub, doods

OP wants no control of his eyes and computer and wants to give that control to corpos.

Upvoted for unpopular and for making clear, legitimate points in favour.

That said, I partially agree. Serving content costs money, as does investigating, reporting and writing it. Paywalls are the Black Death of the Internet, so what else remains? A creator fee as provided by Brave in the past was nice but didn’t work. Donations are scarce, small and unreliable. Advertising has proven to work well for old school newspapers and magazines, so it’s an understandable choice.

However, from advertising it escalated extremely quickly into the Stasi-inspired tracking-snooping-profiling fuckfest it has become, not taking into account the disgusting ad-to-content ratio, pop-ups, pop-overs and yes, pop-unders, flashing banners, animated swf banners and the abuse of the ad markets by malware and espionage groups.

And I too, Gandalf, I was there, 3000 years ago, when my wizard wrote the OSF1 binaries on the securely aligned platters of oulde.

One counterpoint I would have is that I believe most ads are paid per-click? I actively refuse to click on any internet ad anyway, might as well block it.