Well we (web developers) are trying to make the ad experience as best as we can. A lot of websites wouldn't even exist without ads (Google, Facebook etc...).
If ads are annoying you, use Adblock, but do not remove ads from every user by default!
I work for big startup in the US, and we wouldn't exist without ads.
I think they're just doing that to get good publicity (oh Free doesn't show ads on internet? I think I'll sign-up at that ISP!) and also to piss off youtube.
They will turn it off by default in a couple weeks/month for sure. Mark my words.
Its possible to disable it but it's enabled by default. Lets see how long they last before Google strike back !
Free has always been in trouble with Google because they don't want to pay for the peering.
They seems to only want to block Google ads. Free and Google have had issues for a long time about 'who pays for bandwidth'. Google doesn't want to pay, so Free blocks their revenues.
ISPs modifying the HTML served is a big issue. I'm not that much of a fan of ads, but disabling ads is crazy.
It's not working that well apparently.
First thing is: a lot of Google ads are served directly inside GMail (these are the ones I notice the most) and at the top of the result from Google search.
If that trafis is over HTTPS I've gat to wonder how Free plans to filter them out.
But in any way: Free already wanted to throttle YouTube, which is not OK.
If I'm paying Free that much of an amount each month I want my bandwith. I Free cannot provide me the bandwith I want, then I'll go to an ISP who can and who doesn't throttle me.
People do NOT like advertisements, the popularity of AdBlock shows that pretty clearly.