However, when all is said and done, I can understand why popups and ads are shoved in our faces because basically the internet is free, so that is just a price we must pay. I run a no-script program, and I get no ads or popups at all, but then, I rarely surf the Net.
I get what you're saying, however I don't prescribe to that line created by the ad people themselves and repeated so many times that good people like yourself assume it came from us users. It did not.
The internet itself was/is free, except for a few large corps trying to charge for it directly years ago. We pay our isp's to be on the internet. That part isn't free, but what does it mean by the advertisers when they say they are helping to keep it free?
That is nonsense by the ad industry to make us believe some sort of more costly usage fee or something. When you stop and think about it, what else other than your isp costs would cost you? Personally, I wouldn't miss 95% of the advertising if it went away and it would not hurt ME at all monetarily. It would only hurt the ad industry that evolved to take advantage of yet another type of ad real estate by taking over our computer screens.
Not one iota was my choosing. In 40+ years of using the internet I was never asked once what my opinion was concerning unsolicited advertising and downloading unknown shit in the background to my computer without my consent.
