In my book, it's no longer a question of ethics, at least not directly. Way back when, we all agreed that if I look at some ads, a web site will let me view some content. Fair enough, it's a proven model and though I might not particularly like advertising, I'll trade some eyeballs for some content. Way back when, maybe it _was_ a question of ethics. But not anymore.<p>What "we" <i>didn't</i> agree to was being tracked all over the web, malware being shoved down the pipe via ads, ignoring "do not track", and all of the other nefarious things ad networks have been trying to get away with. Ethics have gone out the window, if ethics ever existed on the side of advertisers. So I run an ad blocker, and I make no apologies for doing so.<p>"What about the little guy who pays for hosting with ads?" You mean the "little guy" who has to scrape couch change to pay for the site that contains his latest post about artisanal mayonnaise and her latest gadget acquisition? Yeah, that $100/year for hosting is really going to break her, might not be able to get next year's Apple Watch on release day.<p>The big boys and girls like The Verge and what have you? Well, using The Verge as an example, they could go under tomorrow and IMO the world would be no poorer, given that they've kind of turned to poo in recent days. I blame the web advertising model for part of their deterioration, but that's a long digression. Specific examples aside, what about the sites I like? I pay money to the sites I like, specifically Ars Technica, NYT, and the Economist (and some others I'm sure I've forgotten about). Some, like Daring Fireball, use unobtrusive, single-image ads that I'll occasionally click on because they interest me, as well as a desire to reward a job well done.<p>But at the end of the day, the whole thing isn't my problem. If a few bad actors (or, in reality, a <i>lot</i> of bad actors) want to crawl into my machine and have their way, I'm blocking all of them. If there's collatoral damage because of some bad actors, it's not my job to fix it. I did my part and said, "no, you don't". Don't lay the onus on me to play nice, because you're berating the wrong party.