I thinks we need to remember the context of this conversation, I’m not against blocking tracking and not wanting to be tracked. I’m just against blocking ads then saying it’s taking the moral high ground and vilifying content creators who offer ads. I’m not even against blocking ads period, so long as we’re accepting the fact that it’s for personal benefit and definitely not “sticking it to the man”
The problem is we don’t have a protocol for signaling that they want to track you before you load the content and its tracking.
So you get the content, the tracking code, and detection for anti-ad/tracking plugins.
If they detect anti-ad plugins they say “We did give you the content, but we see you don’t have the form of payment we want so please don’t view it”
At that point, to me, neither side has done anything wrong. Would it be preferable if they could give you the “please don’t view it” message upfront? Definitely. But instead they let you opt out.
Once you decide to modify the paywall away and view the content you still haven’t done anything wrong but you’re saying “I want to view content paid for by showing people ads that was also designed to drive ad engagement but I don’t deserve to have to view ads so I’ll ignore your paywall since it’s my computer and you let me have the content” ... which is fine. And also won’t solve the actual underlying problem. Instead we just get an arms race of ad-block vs anti-ad-block (which anti will lose) and content creators hoping ad-blocking doesn’t reach critical mass.
The alternative is to turn down the content by going away. That sends the message that you won’t support the model. Bonus points if you pay someone willing to take your money in exchange for not tracking you since the most effective way to disrupt the market right now is to fund those trying to break out of the current model.