Piracy and ad-blockers are both theft

I have some sympathy for the point of view that people visiting web-pages should not run ad-blockers. I don't run one myself. Unfortunately my willingness to see ads is being exploited by two things.

i) Shitty quality link-bait articles.

ii) people willing to serve some just plain awful ads. (Things with noise; things with Flash; things that blink and shake and in horrible colours; things that violate basic privacy and are borderline illegal in EU; etc etc.)

Please: Offer me sensible ads, or offer me a payment option.

I'm amazed at the number of newspaper sites that still don't offer an online only subscription mode. I have no interest in having a dead tree newspaper delivered to me, but I'm more than happy to pay for online access to good quality articles.

I'd happily pay to read articles suggested by Longform. Perhaps they should have a tipjar for each article with a suggested donation price; with a separate tipjar for their site running costs?

I would have more sympathy towards the "blocking ads is theft" view if ad-supported websites and applications didn't routinely claim they were free.

Either it's free (and we have no obligation to load ads, not that they should be involved anyway) or it costs some of our privacy and/or attention (so we should at least stick the ads on our screens, even if we don't consciously pay attention to them). But claiming that something's free and then whinging that we cut the ads out isn't on.

Offer me an option that removes the ads, even if it costs me a little bit, we both win. Otherwise the site owner looses, because if the ads are to much in my face I either block them or never come back. I don't have cable TV for the same reason. I'm tired of ads.

Ridiculous.