Ad Blocking Is Not Piracy. It’s Digital Self-Defense.

Ad Blocking Is Not Piracy. It’s Digital Self-Defense.

Our tools should serve us, not the other way around. The modern web is a negotiation - between creators who need to eat, advertisers who want attention, and users who want agency over their time, bandwidth, and devices. In that negotiation, I support ad blocking. You should too. Not because creators don’t deserve compensation - many do, and I support plenty directly - but because the right to decide what runs on your machine and what occupies your attention is foundational to digital freedom. This isn’t a fringe or radical stance; it’s the practical, ethical center of user sovereignty.

Let me be transparent about my own bias. I’m a creator, and like most creators, I’m not blind to the realities of revenue (though I don’t engage in any advertising or affiliate nonsense). I care about building a sustainable model for the work I publish. I also care about the long-term health of the web, and that means respecting the person on the other side of the screen. I can acknowledge that ad revenue is part of the ecosystem while also arguing firmly that you don’t owe me your attention for any ad I (or a platform) chooses to serve. Consent, control, and choice are not luxuries; they’re the minimum standard for a web worth having.

What Piracy Actually Is (And Why Ad Blocking Isn’t)

Words matter. “Piracy” carries serious legal and moral weight, and we should not throw it around just to win an argument. Piracy is the unauthorized copying and distribution of someone else’s copyrighted work. Making duplicates of a CD and selling them is piracy. Ripping a movie and seeding it to a sharing network is piracy. Rehosting paywalled content without permission is piracy. These acts involve reproduction and redistribution - taking someone else’s work and making new copies available.

Ad blocking does none of this. When you block an ad, you aren’t copying or distributing anything. You’re telling your device not to load certain resources or not to render specific elements. That’s not theft; that’s configuration. It’s like choosing not to open junk mail, or setting your phone to silence unknown callers. You remain within your own perimeter - your hardware, your bandwidth, your screen - and decide what you will and won’t accept. Collapsing this difference blurs the line between the protected act of private use and the legally and ethically distinct act of public redistribution.

The Bad Analogy That Won’t Die

A common rhetorical trick is to compare ad blocking to sneaking into a ticketed event and then claiming it’s fine because you bought a t-shirt (This argument was presented by LinusTechTips). It sounds persuasive until you look at the economics. A single ad “impression” on the web is often worth a fraction of a cent. A direct purchase - a membership, a tip, a piece of merch - can be worth thousands or tens of thousands of ad views. In other words, the value stack online is inverted: the “merch” can dwarf the “ticket.”

In a theater, the ticket is the primary product and the merch is ancillary. Online on the other hand, the ads are often the flimsiest slice of creator revenue, while direct support is the durable part. So the analogy misleads because it smuggles in assumptions from a different market structure. If your single purchase or contribution funds more creative work than passively loading ten thousand ads, the moral calculus isn’t “you didn’t pay” - it’s “you paid better.” The creator may not prefer it if their model leans heavily on ad volume, but that’s a business choice, not a moral indictment of your sovereign use of your device.

The Mythical “Implied Contract”

Another claim you hear is that “free content in exchange for your attention” forms an implied contract. The pitch is simple: the publisher gives you content; you give them your attention to ads. On paper, that sounds tidy. In reality, it collapses under the most basic scrutiny. If there is such a contract, does it require you to unmute the ad, look directly at it with full focus, consider its claims, and perhaps click? If you look away, stretch, or go refill your coffee during the ad, have you “breached” the deal?

For decades, audiences have muted commercials, flipped channels, looked away, and taken bathroom breaks. This behavior has always been baked into advertising economics because advertisers never had authority over your body, your time, or your attention. They had a shot - nothing more. The “implied contract” isn’t a contract at all; it’s an expectation layered with wishful thinking. When expectations meet user choice, user choice wins, as it should. Ad blocking simply operationalizes that choice with precision and efficiency.

History Already Voted: Users Control Their Viewing

Legal markets tell us what society accepts. Consumers have been skipping ads with mainstream, lawful tools for decades. VCRs, and later DVRs, shipped with commercial-skip features that made fast-forwarding through ads almost effortless. These products didn’t spark mass lawsuits, nor were they treated as piracy-enablers in the eyes of the law. They existed because the norm was clear: users have always exercised discretion over what they watch, and technology that helps them do so is legitimate (Credit to Louis Rossman for this point, please support his great work here).

If skipping ads were tantamount to piracy (and therefore against the law), those devices wouldn’t have been sold at scale by major consumer electronics brands. We weren’t raiding living rooms because someone fast-forwarded through a detergent commercial. The principle hasn’t changed; only the delivery medium has. Ad blocking is the web-native evolution of the same user instinct: select the content you want, and move past what you don’t. Pretending the internet suddenly transforms an old, accepted behavior into moral deviance doesn’t survive contact with either history or common sense.

Who’s Actually Harmed? Follow the Incentives

To reason clearly, separate the incentives. Advertisers want genuine attention because paying for fake or empty “views” is a waste. Creators want revenue to support their work. Users want control and safety. In this triangle, ad blocking often clarifies, rather than corrupts, the market. If an ad never loads, it usually doesn’t get billed, which means the advertiser doesn’t pay for an impression that never happened. That’s more honest than an ad silently playing in a background tab to no one.

Creators understandably dislike fewer billable impressions, because that reduces a familiar revenue stream. But notice the asymmetry in outrage: many creators don’t complain when users “let the ad run” while muting, ignoring, or stepping away - behavior that bills the advertiser without delivering the promised attention. Why? Because the creator gets paid either way. If the true moral concern were fairness across the board, creators would be equally bothered by billed-but-ignored ads as they are by blocked ads. The selective outrage gives the game away: this is about securing creator revenue, not enforcing some universal ethic of attention. That’s a business preference, not a moral claim on your device.

The Slippery Slope We Should Refuse

Words shape laws. If we normalize the idea that exercising control over what your device loads is “piracy,” we inch toward a world where private configuration is treated as a punishable offense. That’s the slippery slope: turning user-side filtering into theft empowers proposals to penalize or sue people for choosing not to accept specific scripts, trackers, or media on their own hardware.

We should draw the line brightly. There is a categorical difference between redistribution (direct harm to companies that may justifie legal remedies) and private configuration (private choice that deserves legal protection). You legally cannot redistribute someone else’s work without permission - full stop. But you can absolutely choose what your browser fetches and renders. Conflating these categories doesn’t just threaten the freedom to block ads; it imperils the broader principle that your computer is yours to command. Once we accept the framing that “not loading is stealing,” almost any user protection can be recast as wrongdoing.

User Sovereignty Is the Point

Ad blocking isn’t just a tactic; it’s an expression of a principle: you control your environment. Attention is finite. Bandwidth is finite. Battery is finite. The security risk from third-party code is non-trivial. Choosing to minimize noise, reduce attack surface, and curate your experience isn’t antisocial - it’s responsible. It’s what you’d advise any friend to do in the physical world: lock your doors, close your blinds when you want privacy, and don’t let salespeople camp in your living room because you once walked into their store.

When we talk about sovereignty in the digital realm, we aren’t waving a flag for chaos. We’re advocating for consent and boundaries. The default should be opt-in, not opt-out - especially when the payload often includes invasive tracking, auto-playing media, misleading “native” ads, and script bloat that can crash devices or devour mobile data plans. Ad blocking is a boundary. Good actors can and do earn exceptions by being respectful, light, and transparent. But the right to set the boundary comes first.

Where We Draw the Line (And Why It’s the Right Line)

Here’s a crisp framing. You don’t get to copy and distribute someone else’s work without permission. That’s a bright red line I respect and expect others to respect too. But you absolutely get to decide how you consume publicly served content. That includes whether you load heavy third-party scripts, whether you show images, whether you autoplay video, and yes, whether you render ads. These are your choices because they happen on your device, with your resources, under your roof.

What about paywalls and metered models? Same principle: if you agree to a specific exchange (for example, payment for access), honor it. But if a site offers public access and attempts to include ads as part of the experience, you have no obligation - ethical or legal - to accept every component. Imagine if a magazine forced you to keep all the loose inserts and threatened you for throwing them away. We’d call that absurd in print. It’s equally absurd online.

A Better Deal for Everyone: Practical Alternatives to Ad Dependence

None of this denies that creators need revenue. They do. But the healthiest models are those that align incentives with actual value. If you enjoy someone’s work, support it directly. A single membership, tip, consultation, or purchase can eclipse years of low-yield ad views. It’s cleaner, more durable, and more respectful on all sides. You get a better experience. The creator gets stable income. The advertiser isn’t billed for attention that never materialized.

Creators, for our part, should earn whitelisting. Keep pages light. Avoid attention traps. Disclose clearly. Offer meaningful, ad-free options. Be explicit about what support tiers fund and what they unlock. Show fans the math: how a small recurring contribution outperforms passive ad exposure. Build for trust, not tricks. When people understand the real economics - and when the experience respects them - they respond with generosity. That is the long game worth playing.

Security, Performance, and Sanity Are Legitimate Interests

Beyond economics and ethics lies a practical reality: third-party ad ecosystems can be messy, heavy, and risky. Many of us use blockers not just to reduce noise, but to protect ourselves from malvertising, curb CPU spikes, stop auto-play videos from blaring in quiet rooms, and preserve battery life on the go. These are not trivial concerns; they’re daily quality-of-life issues. The web becomes palpably better - faster, calmer, safer - when you filter aggressively and then selectively allow what deserves to be there.

Creators who take pride in their craft can empathize with this. If we had to choose between someone never visiting our site because it’s unbearable and someone visiting with a blocker but reading deeply and supporting directly, we should prefer the latter. A blocker is not hostility; it’s a user saying, “I want you, not your ad stack.” That’s a compliment - and an invitation to build a better experience.

The Economics: Pennies vs. Patronage

Let’s talk scale. A typical ad impression might be worth a fraction of a cent. The variance is wide, but the baseline is tiny. Meanwhile, a single purchase or contribution can be worth thousands or tens of thousands of those impressions. When someone blocks ads and supports a creator directly, they aren’t shirking; they’re upgrading. Even when a user doesn’t contribute directly, their choice to filter out tracking-heavy scripts can reduce costs for publishers (less bandwidth, fewer support issues) and nudge the ecosystem toward lighter, more efficient delivery.

This asymmetry is why analogies to ticketed events fail. In ad-funded spaces, “the ticket” (ad views) is not the anchor of value; it’s the leakiest part of the bucket. Trying to guilt users into propping up that leak is bad strategy. Designing better buckets - direct value exchanges, aligned sponsorships, premium content - is how you carry water across seasons. Ad blocking doesn’t drain the ocean; it reveals where the buckets actually hold.

What About “Ethical Piracy”? It’s a Category Error

Sometimes people concede that ad blocking isn’t illegal but still insist it’s “ethically” akin to piracy because it “circumvents the payment mechanism.” This poetic flourish hides a basic mistake: equating “not paying” with “stealing.” If a business model depends on broadcasting something publicly and hoping people tolerate the extras, no one is obligated to fulfill the hope. Choosing not to watch an ad is not the same as taking the underlying content and redistributing it. One is refusal; the other is appropriation. Ethics, like law, distinguish between these.

If a publisher wants to make viewing ads a true precondition, there are explicit ways to do so - gates, login walls, transact-for-access models. Users can accept or decline those deals with eyes open. But as long as content is served publicly, any “you must also accept X” claim is merely a request. Users can and will answer it with their settings. That’s not evasion; that’s consent in action.

Creators: Build With, Not Against, User Agency

I’m a creator too, so let me turn the lens back on us. The easiest thing in the world is to blame the audience. The harder - and more fruitful - path is to adapt. If your income swings wildly with a third-party ad market you don’t control, diversify. If your pages are heavy with trackers and pop-ups, clean them. If you need stable revenue, articulate a value proposition worth paying for directly.

When we treat audiences like partners, everything improves. Transparency breeds trust. Respect breeds reciprocity. The users most likely to block ads are also the users most likely to understand the economics and support the work they value. They’re careful, intentional, and principled. In other words: they’re exactly the readers Sovereign Stacker exists to serve. Meet them where they are, and they’ll do the same.

The Bottom Line

Ad blocking is not piracy. It’s a user exercising legitimate control over their device, their bandwidth, and their attention. Piracy involves copying and redistributing someone else’s work without permission; ad blocking does not. History, economics, and ethics all converge on the same conclusion: blocking ads is a reasonable, responsible response to an ecosystem that too often forgets that consent - not capture - is the cornerstone of legitimate exchange.

If you value digital freedom and sovereignty, use an ad blocker without apology. Curate your experience. Support the creators you love directly, in ways that map to real value. Whitelist the rare sites that earn your trust by being light, respectful, and transparent. And to creators build models that thrive because we respect our audience, not despite it. That’s how we keep the web open, sane, and worth defending.