In most cases, I don’t think it’s ads as concept that’s the problem. If websites only had static ads in the sidebar, I question how many people would bother with ad blockers.

But when ads block content; include flashing animations, audio, and video; and take up more layout space on a site than the actual content; then people have had enough.

I don’t think it’s ever going to be so simple that we can bucket all non-tech users together. I occasionally volunteer as IT support for a small non-profit where everyone is non-technical and in many cases old. Their understanding of browsers were:

- Chrome is the fast one.

- IE is the one that have to use for some government/old websites.

- Ad Blockers are for safety (akin to anti-virus).

This was from a group that didn’t even know how to install Chrome on the new computers they got this year.

Group knowledge on this topic is largely going to be driven by what they’ve heard in the news or perpetuated by their social circles. And scary things will stick for long after they stop being true.

That doesn't mean the side-effect of most people avoiding spying at the same time is somehow an unwanted one.

I think most can agree here this level of spying on users is bad. Its sorta like child labor but a lot less obviously bad, in that it is obviously bad, nobody likes it, but there's enough taking advantage of it not being illegal, so its just socially tolerated thing. But once made illegal it will be looked back on like "how the hell did we think that was okay? how the hell did we willingly let it occur?"

I think the reality is more complicated. People sort of suspect being spied on, but it's hidden, not so real. It's abstract so if you ask any reasonable person, they'll say they don't like the spying, but few will take an impairment in function for something they use in order to avoid it because it seems somewhat distant.

Anecdotally, that's the case for me. I've been blocking ads since ~2000 because I don't like ads. It's only more recently that I've really stepped up efforts by not allowing third party scripts, using temporary/multi-account containers, using Decentraleyes, stripping identifiers from query strings, etc.