team_doom

It's pretty simple. The great content is created because the site can afford to pay for it. The "something else" I'm forcing you to look at is keeping the servers on. They HAVE figured out how to make it profitable, and you've figured out how to avoid paying for it. Just because you feel that the moral obligation is manufactured doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Paywalls are not the answer in all cases, and I do think there are moral as well as technical questions here.

I call it entitlement because you want, and are getting, a free lunch. I call it cognitive dissonance because as an adult with bills to pay you must understand that you are hurting a business by consuming content that costs them money to create and host without paying for it, be it with your time or your money.

I don't disagree with the fact that ads could be better served more safely and more securely. And I agree that the experience could be better. That's where my comment about writing an email to explain ones unhappiness with the user experience comes in. I work in information security and we do see a lot of malware infections from compromised ad servers.

The idea of a website serving ads themselves, instead of relying on a call to an ad network, is good. It means big changes to how advertising works though. The advertisers would have to give customers the ads for them to embed into the page and would need some sort of guarantee that the customer wouldn't change the ads and would pull them down when it was time to do so. I can't think of a way to check this stuff automatically that doesn't involve a call to an advertisers server, which is the whole problem to begin with.

I do, actually. I listen to commercials on the radio all the time. It's how they pay for the content I'm listening to and they are often targeted enough that I hear about a business/offer that is pertinent to me. I don't think it's "utter nonsense". I feel like I'm supporting the continued existence of something that I care enough about to listen to. If they can't monetize the service, how can it be expected to continue? Is there no cognitive dissonance for you when you consume something without paying for it? This is the entitlement I referred to in another comment. I don't have cable, so no TV ads.

I'm not sure what you mean by this?

To me that comes off as "Hey, I'm angry you won't let me view your content without paying for it anymore". Obviously in this case paying for it is viewing/watching ads. Not trying to get high and mighty with anyone. The whole ad-block culture just screams entitlement to me and it bothers me a lot.

I think this is the wrong way to approach this. You're essentially pirating content now. If you don't like the ads, stop using the site. It's that simple. To take it a step farther, send an email to customer service explaining WHY you're no longer using the site. This sends a much stronger message to them about what makes you unhappy with the service they provide.