I can also decide to walk out of the room, check my phone, ignore the ads, etc
The problem with this part of your argument is that it ignores free will, and conflates morals with ethics. Blocking ads is a moral imperative for me, because I decide which programming I watch. The self-serving reasoning and the superior logical reasoning are one and the same.
Ethically, it might also be wrong to do. But not for the reasons you describe here.
I'm less interested in the semantic differences between "morals" and "ethics", I like old computers, not philosophy.
If you are taking something out of a system while intentionally preventing contributing back to it, you know you are having a negative impact.
I would prefer someone either make their stand by boycotting something they disagree with entirely or admit that it has value and pay with time for ads or directly. But acting like you disagree with the material while still engaging with it and depriving the creator is immature and selfish.
This is such a weird view of ad space. It's not some "drink verification can" nonsense, it's selling the space where prospective customers might see it. I'm not even involved in the transaction. People who dislike ads enough to install blockers aren't sealing any more than when I immediately pitch junk mail despite it being a major revenue source for the USPS. If the means by which ads are delivered drives everyone into using blockers and drives the value to zero that's an ad problem not a user problem. No one owes you valuable ad real estate, that is and will forever be a you problem.
The very idea of admonishing people for not subjecting themselves to time wasting corporate propaganda garbage is insane. How is this where we're at? People with billboard space are allowed to sell it to advertisers, but in no universe does that transaction mean that I or anyone else have to look at it. The fact that technology has allowed for ads that are harder to avoid compared to not looking at a sign in the window doesn't change the dynamic.
Then find another platform that doesn't artificially incentivize longer videos filled with crap. And I'm not even talking about the advertising, which is easy to skip. I'm talking about the fact that videos don't get to the point, lowering the signal-to-noise ratio. It is a cultural abomination.
I stopped trusting Youtube as soon as they added the 10 minute rule for monetization. That was quite awhile ago. You didn't see this coming and now you're blaming the viewers that are tired of having their time wasted and faith in humanity eroded from this crap. Don't make it our problem, we've dealt with it enough already.
> If you are taking something out of a system while intentionally preventing contributing back to it, you know you are having a negative impact.
This is the same flawed argument against software piracy, but even more absurd. Just like piracy, this is a service problem.
Some people refuse to be forced into the transaction of selling their attention to consume advertising. Being psychologically manipulated is not worth it, and certainly not in exchange for some digital content.
If content creators understood this, they would seek out alternative business models to capture this demographic.
If they want 100% of their audience to pay for their content, they should go on a different platform and put up a paywall. You can't simultaneously want the exposure that "free" access gives you, while objecting when people choose to not participate in the business transaction you've forced upon them.
What advertising does is introduce a sleazy middleman that gets rich by tarnishing the end product and harming the consumer. Then the platform that hosts the content decides how much of this wealth gets trickled down to the actual creator, who is then annoyed when it's not enough, and blames the consumer for it.
How about eliminating the middleman and producing something people will choose to pay you for directly?
The problem with this part of your argument is that it ignores free will, and conflates morals with ethics. Blocking ads is a moral imperative for me, because I decide which programming I watch. The self-serving reasoning and the superior logical reasoning are one and the same.
Ethically, it might also be wrong to do. But not for the reasons you describe here.