While I understand this, in my opinion I don't think it's immoral at all because it's really more on what you believe - if you believe it's immoral, then it's immoral, and if you don't, then it isn't.
Depending on the ad provider, the advertisements can vary greatly by type and target, and with marketing surveys (or marketing data) ad companies can refine what ads belong to whatever site is requesting ads for revenue. In other words, you'll have ads of baby-related products targeted for women on a maternity forum as an example. There are also the the search-based ads (e.g. text ads when you search something on Google), and the generic ads (that target the majority of people).
I'm not sure if he really understands the point of view from people who use adblockers to block ads. The look of the ad itself can vary from a static image to a flash video, along with deceptive ads that try to fool you by making you think you're navigating where you wanted to go but is (usually) a place so that your computer can get infected with malware.
My main point for blocking ads are four main things:
- Ad placement
- Animated/Video ads
- Malware
- Privacy
Animated and/or Video ads can be quite irritating. If you're trying to read an article (let's say) and there's a little ad banner off to the side (or worse, scrolling with the page) and it's constantly flashing and trying to pull your attention away from the article, isn't that at least a bit annoying? Animated ads in Android/iOS applications are probably the worst, as some of them may actually induce an epileptic response for those who are epileptic. While I haven't seen modern desktop-browser based animated ads, I'd like to avoid doing so.
Video ads take animated ads one step further and add sound into the mix (often along with an auto-play function). Let's take that same article reading scenario and toss the animated ad out and replace it with a video ad. I'm not sure about others, but I find it hard to read when listening to someone talk or some annoying sound is playing. Luckily, most of the time you can pause/stop the video ad (or just not have Flash installed, though it might still play with HTML5), but sometimes it doesn't allow you to.
Some ads are just there to confuse you and take you to sites that inject malware into your computer, usually claiming that your computer has some sort of performance issue. When I'm on a clean Linux installation (or live environment), I laugh at these types of ads that are directed towards installation of Windows ("Windows running slow?" is usually something I see), since it's too obvious when using Linux.
Privacy is a big issue that has recently popped up, but not too many people quite understand it well enough. Ads can store browser cookies and in turn allow the ad company to find out what sites you visit to be able to figure out your demographic and what sort of ads to put on sites that they have ads on that you visit. Blocking ads may not give you complete web privacy, but it's at least a start. For cases like this, you definitely want an addon/extension that protects you from ad cookies as well (Ghostery for example).
Besides all that, I do also block ads because they're just an eyesore... I am viewing the page for content, not so that marketers can come out and try to get me to purchase a product or service. It's the same reason I prefer to watch a movie or show on DVD/BD rather than on television, I don't want to watch ads for a total of about 10 minutes per 20 minutes of showtime.
All I'll say is to think about it for yourself and make a decision based on what you feel is right.
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