There's no either/or decision to be made here. You get compromised, paid for content with our without ads as well. Critical thinking I'd a requirement always.
There definitely is an either/or because blocking of one channel will naturally necessitate money/barter flowing to the other channel. One is at least transparent and regulated, the murky world of influence peddling isn't since it's hard for anyone to tell in the moment whether something is "organic" or not.
Not when the other channel is already at capacity. And it is. Blocking ads has no effect on that. You never agreed to being tracked either, so blocking that is the right and proper thing to do. Blocking surveillance capitalism might push businesses toward honesty, it's at least with a shot.
If you think influencer marketing and product placement are already at capacity you have no idea how much worse it's about to get if ad blocking gets much worse. And the irony is that, by design, you won't know a good chunk of the time and other times it'll just merely be implied without being explicitly stated. Continued use of social networks, including this one, collects way more identifiable data than what the non-Google/FB/Amazon ad market collects. Ad blockers have had near 0 impact on FB's operations. Google and others have paid to ensure that their search ads still make it through most ad blockers.
Blocking ads does not drive businesses to be more "honest". They'll just spend more on PR and influencers. And given how hostile this community is to ads and perhaps even marketing overall, (how YC ever backed a marketing or ad startup is beyond me), companies already realize that getting a fawning TC article purchased thru connections and favors and PR chicanery is going to be more effective than ad campaign even though the ad campaign is more honest, upfront and transparent with its agenda.
