By far the choice of most marginally savvy and above internet users is an ad-model where they themselves ad-block. Which somehow is spun to be morally righteous.
I accidentally browsed a site without ads this morning from my work profile.
Literally on the first link I clicked on on cbs the advertiser somehow figured out how to make my browser redirect to some super-sketchy site saying I was the 5 billionth google search and won blah blah blah.
Browsing without adblock is an unacceptable security risk so long as google et all refuse to audit and comprehensively secure the code they demand to run on my laptop.
Once google's shareholders have wet their beak, the on-campus sushi bars and manicurists and $400k pay packets are paid for and the Taylor Swifts of the world are paid off there isnt much left of your subscription to pay for the long tail of content creators who dont have Taylor Swift's leverage.
Which is why many of them say things like "skip these ads if you like Im not getting any of it" or "Im here primarily for exposure, I make my money elsewhere".
Youtube has a 55/45 (creator/google) split with content creators. YT premium views also pay substantially more. Most of the money youtube makes goes to creators.
With some creators. Casual uploaders (which IMO produce the majority of worthwhile videos) don't get squat. The "professional content creators" produce watered down crap that I close as soon as I see the youtube-face thumbnail designed to game the algorithm.
Morally Righteous? I think it's more they don't have to so they don't. It's like the DVR days where you'd just fast forward ads. It wasn't a moral high ground, it was just easy to do and was better than the alternative.
I do actually think that putting ads in front of children at least is immoral, and it is neglectful not to block ads for kids in the same way that it is to just hand them an unfiltered violence-and-porn device.
It's probably at least irresponsible to not block ads for an elderly parent who's starting to experience cognitive decline.
