I try in all possible situations to only visit sites that I think aren't causing damage to the landscape of the internet but again, that is a separate issue to me choosing to block all ads. When I browse a content aggregator or a friend sends me a link I'm not going to research each site before clicking the link, I'm just going to click the link if I think it will be interesting. And I'm not going to be okay with exposing myself to security vulnerabilities. Browsing the web I have a right to protect myself, and I'm not going to be somehow guilted into removing that protection.
Okay, now we're getting somewhere. So what do you do for a website that doesn't have ads? That website could still attack with you JS bugs, HTML rendering bugs, JPG/PNG rendering bugs, etc.
You're still not really completely protecting yourself. So it seems to me like you're hedging your bets by assuming that primarily websites which have ads are a liability, but websites with no ads, but with equal opportunity for exploiting vulnerabilities are not.
To be fair, there's good history of this to back his assertion. Ad networks have frequently had exploit kits dropped on them.
Not only that but the ad networks also get all your details which makes Internet advertising quite unlike other advertising.
If the ad networks have no "ethics" I see no reason to feel an ethical obligation back. Sucks for content providers, yeah, but if they have to die to get rid of the sketchy ad networks so be it.
I'd be willing to whitelist ad networks which were sandboxed and could only show me straight up images proxied through the first party site. Anything more than that and I'll show some control of my own hardware and block it. Ultimately, it's my hardware, if it does anything I don't like, I have a right to fix it.
