I own a website www.Photopea.com, visited by 3 million people a month. Once in a while, I enable adblock detector, and do not allow usrers with adblocks use the service. I wish everyone was doing that. When you see someone willing to give you a car (or anything else), but they want money in exchange (i.e. sell it to you), you understand, that it is wrong to take the car without giving them money (i.e. stealing). But…
Maybe watching ads would be a fair exchange if there was an option to pay, often (mostly), there isn’t. Additionally to some (most), ads aren’t the problem, its tracking, creation of shadow profiles etc Never used photopea, hope it works out for you, but I wish website creators stopped thinking that invasion of my privacy is a currency
It doesn't work very well, unfortunately. Those willing to pay usually are the most interesting part of the audience for ad providers, so it's difficult to compensate that loss by a reasonably priced 'ad-free' option. You probably would be surprised if you knew how much your attention may cost. Targeted ads created a market where everyone pays proportionally to their spendings. I'm not saying it's a good situation, but it looks like that's a local optimum rather hard to leave.
What bothers me is that huge companies are more resilient to tracking and ads restrictions, so that fight may further speed up centralisation of the internet. I would personally prefer the chaotic old-school world wide web with ugly flashing banners instead.