It's okay to say no to ads, but then we shouldn't circumvent paywalls. Free content is free only as long as someone somehow still pays for it.
What you say may work for big news portals and stuff, but if this becomes the norm then it will kill the small publishers resulting in further concentration of net content in the hands of the big guys.
So this direction would hurt the little guys and help the big guys, because they have the resources to adapt.
I guess they could upscale in tech, but how would they pay for it when they can barely earn enough money to fulfill their primary function?
I don’t think publishers have a problem. I think users do. I hate online news as much as everyone, but I still want deep, intelligent and critical journalism, so I subscribed to a paper which sells it.
It’s one of the most successful news papers of my country, financially, and up until April this year they didn’t have a website. They do now, but it’s basically just a digital version (also available in audio from apps) that you can still only access if you subscribe.
I couldn’t be happier, and they earn money. So maybe the whole free content thing isn’t really a good way to go for either the user or the publisher?
They'd best gain the ability, then, or fade into irrelevance and die.
And honestly, we're talking about serving a few images from their own webserver. It's not rocket science.
The question arises, what images to serve. Someone has to sell advertisement, find clients, persuade them to advertise with the given site, etc. That's something they are getting with ad networks for free.
Its also not a new problem. Newspapers have always had to have their own add sales department or outsource add sales.
My concern, however, is Mozilla putting themselves in the position of making that judgement for their users. Even if we agree that this isn't a good addon, does that mean it's fine for it to be censored by Mozilla?