No I won't feel bad about having ad blockers

I can't wait to find out how much YouTube is going to sue me for in 2025 for 20 years of blocked ad revenue. They're going to use 2005 Napster math. You didn't watch 3 ads per video x 6,000,000 played videos = $2 million lost revenue, pay up citizen, your Google services have been disabled, all location and behavior data is in possession of Alphabet Debt Collection, you cannot run, you cannot hide.

If this happens I'm becoming a terrorist.
- Whoa there buddy, that's risky business to say online. What you need is a VPN! Act now for 50% off NordVPN.
  ... or something like that.
That's some Shadowrun level dystopian shit
- See you in the ad revenue gulag. We're going to love our cooperate sponsors when we get out. I hope we both get McDonalds.
Alphadebt Inc

The entire fucking web worked with no ads for literally years. I do not feel bad, and won't lament if companies can't afford to pay people to cram even more JavaScript into web pages.

Sorry, web developers. Your masters are making you do evil things. It isn't your fault, but I hate your jobs.

There were less than 200 websites in 1993 when the first paid ad was introduced shortly thereafter. There were over 100k websites by the end of 1995.
So you're kind of right, but ads have been part of the Internet for 30 years. And half of the internet that we know today wouldn't have survived if this wasn't the case.
- Half of he internet is shit, so - again - I personally would not lament its loss. My mom, who lives in games like Farmville these days, probably would, but she'd probably be healthier and happier if she took up knitting again.
- FOR YEARS!
  August 1991 the web was made available to CERN, 1993 was the year it truly became open to the public and ads were introduced the same year...
  I mean, I guess they were technically right? But it's the same as the "cable didn't have ads" bullshit people keep saying...
- I think the difference was, they were just side banners and that's it. They didn't have all this insane tracking, data analysis, metrics, and knowing everything about you bullshit they do now.
- So you're kind of right, but ads have been part of the Internet for 30 years.
  And so have been adblockers.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_blocking
It's probably worth noting that this has a lot to do with VCs pumping in a seemingly unlimited amount of funding for services that aren't profitable yet but has potential to be later. Hence why Twitter is still a thing despite running at a loss for almost its entire lifetime.
Well, if you don't mind losing all online content that's more than a couple mb in size then sure, what you're saying makes sense... Safely hosting over 1 billion videos costs money and people don't want to pay for it directly so...
- Tens of millions of people can and do pay. This isn't about covering costs, this is about making line go up faster than last year, every year, no matter what.

Ads are psychological abuse. I refuse to subject myself to that.

Better yet: Or use adnauseam and fuck up their ad-tracking infrastructure beyond just blocking the ads

It's weird to see how many comments are hysterically defending excessive ads.