That's funny, because I'm a PAID subscriber to The Economist, and on opening the page, there is a big ad banner on the top and other on the right, filling more than half the space. (I don't bother using adblockers,though). Newspapers have always shown ads even for paying consumers. As the very article ends with: "Users who pay to block ads in some areas are still likely to find them popping up in new ones."
As a non paying ublock origin user, I don't see any ads. The ad-free internet has already been here for a long time if you are willing to spend 10 minutes install ublock origin. Paying is actually worse, because it shows the fact that you have some amount of disposable income and are willing to pay for things, which greatly increases the value of advertising to you specifically.
I have never really used an ad blocker for any kind of time. I've tried on multiple occasions but then just range uninstall it whenever some random site breaks because of it and I don't realise it's because of it. Last time it was some online shop...
Regardless of the morality / philosophical questions, the modern web feels to janky and unstable for me to trust the house of cards staying standing if you throw some Adblock in there.
(But maybe I just didn't tweak the blocker enough...)
If a site breaks from adblocking it wasn’t worth my time to begin with. If an online shopping site breaks I look at it with a heavy side eye and am thankful I didn’t provide my credit card information to such a poorly engineered and secured service.
I'm a subscriber with UBlock and I still get a "Give a gift" footer. And when they deliver the print magazine, there's ads (including on the back cover) AND a flyer "give a gift." Which is annoying because the flyer always drops out.
Subscribing merely turns the "Please subscribe yourself" ads into "Give the gift of knowledge to a friend."
For real, that comment made me sad. Whenever I see the web in someone else's computer without adblockers I wonder how they didn't get off the internet altogether.
