This problem has its roots in a much deeper problem.
Advertising is not part of the internet model, the model for the internet allows people to display content, and it allows people to view content. It says nothing about the business of it all.
So when people say things like:
The Web is governed by an unwritten contract: You get nearly everything for free in exchange for the hassle of a few ads hovering on the periphery—and occasionally across the whole screen for a few seconds
It makes me quite mad, none of us really agreed to this, people flood their websites with adverts because the user has no choice, well now we do.
We're just so used to seeing adverts that you think that somehow the website owners deserve to make that money back...well they don't, they don't own or control the medium through which they advertise they have no right to do anything other than display what they want.
The users have the ability to block and decide what to leave out of websites via the software they decide to use.
The essense of the problem is that advertisers currently pay for view traffic equally, without any regard for if users want to see the adverts or not.
Why would a business who wants to promote a product, want to pay to advertise to people who are actively irritated and basically P*ssed Off with adverts?
Well they don't, just like with email spam, only a very small number of people respond to spam in a way that leads to additional revenue.
So to solve this issue of not knowing who is a potential target or not, they just mass spam everyone which is one of the most unprofessional ways to do anything ever...you dont solve the terrorist situation by shooting everyone...theres few other warps of life where people would put up with that kind of nonsense.
Its enabled because mass spam is relatively cheap and theres no consequence to their actions because people have no alternative. Well whatcha know? Now we do, so now it's a problem for them.
I think the moral/ethical argument is a load of rubbish, theres no websites I use that is irreplaceable if they closed down because they weren't sustainable anymore. Besides if advertising died completely businesses would have trillions in saved expense, they could afford to reduce their profits and pass the saving on to the customer (cheaper prices)
I find it very perplexing that the ABP author has issues with not allowing hidden ads to still be requested from the server, like the original Adblock allowed, it gives the hit to the website but doesn't display it.
Yet the author is perfectly fine with users who dont want to view/click the advert unblock it to support their fave websites.
How is this any different?
Apart from it being harder to detect foul play and easier to get away with, it's still at the end of the day a rip off for the person who is trying to promote their product.
If this is purely a moral thing to give money back to certain favourite websites then simply allow the site to be hit for the view and not displayed on the page at the request of the user, some kind of button to toggle would be ideal.
In my opinon this is powerful in more than one way, it allows users to block ads, and feed revenue back to sites they support. BUT it also points out how stupid the advertising model is...and will encourage advertisers to alter the model to something that is less retarded.
Throwing trillions of ads out there to catch a handful of people that actually generate revenue through clicks is a BAD business model, thats a problem between the business wanting to promote products and the advertisers, why the hell are the users are getting dragged into it?
*edit*
Basically I think Im saying that it's a fundamentally unsolvable problem, until the business behind it changes to adapt to a web where the users have more power over the content it will never have an elogant solution.
The framework needs to change first, so that advertising to people who dont want to see the adverts is actually recognised as a really stupid thing to do, it's a massive waste of resources.
So to do something to tare down that frame work like giving the power back to the users (with adblock) and let them adaprt and re-think the business behind it - it's a positive thing. Once we have a way of recognising a so called "worthwhile view" that can be assigned value and the idea of then passing revenue on to your favourite websites via your view data actually has some real meaning.
OK...so far less users want that, but then the relative value of the users who are likely to click links to products goes up. At the end of the day people want sales, why advertise to people who ignore you, it just makes no sense.