Ask HN: Does anybody not use an adblocker?

Arguably, in a black and white sense I think so. In a practical sense no. You wouldn't expect someone who's blind to get a free meal at a restaurant just because they are blind. From a practical point of view implementing ads for the visually impaired probably costs more than the ads gain, and therefore a company would rather not, but if a company implemented an accommodation so that the ad could be experienced by the impaired person, then I would argue not experiencing that ad is unethical.

> Is it unethical to use a computer that isn’t associated with you?

The point is applying Kant's categorical imperative. If we took the idea of using ad block and made it a rule that everyone must follow, websites would not be able to fund themselves because they fund themselves by showing ads which creates a contradiction and therefore using adblock is unethical.

You can equivocate to try to justify the behavior, but that doesn't change that for most of the web, you are provided a web page in exchange for ads.

Companies are taking your data and selling it because they can, and you don't know the value of your data, so that is arguably theft and almost certainly unethical too. Poorly specified contracts are also unethical. When you visit a website, you don't know what you are giving up or the price you are paying. That's wrong.

I am a little sad there is no wide spread doxxing of the owners of adtech/data broker companies to force the ethics discussion in congress.

Some sites have annoying ad popups, but most of the time they're just embedded in the sites and I don't even notice them.

The reason is that I now have a website and earn money through ad banners, so I understand how challenging it is to optimize ad banners. Meanwhile, we may have 60% of users using adblock in certain fields.