>The ad industry has spent years cultivating a 'fuck you' attitude where they would do everything that was within their technical capabilities to spy on people and shovel ads on top of them. To now suddenly be concerned about the 'morality' of what other people do is the height of hypocrisy. The ad industry has lived by the sword of 'technical capabilities are all that matters' (to the detriment of basically everyone else on the Internet), so it's only fair that they may now die on that sword, like it or not.
"They were mean in the past so we can be mean to them now," is not really a valid argument.
I'm more concerned with the anthropomorphism of an entire industry. This line of reasoning ignores the fact that The Ad Industry is not A Person With A Memory And Coherent History but rather just an almost-random sample of people with jobs. If the industry was immoral ten years ago, that doesn't mean it's immoral now, and it doesn't mean that most of the people that make it up are immoral - then or now.
But, your counter-argument is not really a valid counter-argument, either. If we act as though the present incarnation of the ad industry is to be held responsible for its past actions, that will encourage moral behavior going forward and discourage hypocrisy. Of course, I'm still anthropomorphizing the ad industry here, and assuming that it's even capable of "learning a lesson" might be assuming too much (for the record, I think it mostly is assuming too much). But I think that's supposed to be the point - sort of. By anthropomorphizing a thing, we might force that thing to behave somewhat anthropomorphically. Or, we might not.
I think we're all just trying to rationalize our behavior which is that we don't like looking at ads, and we have the technical means to block ads, so we block ads. Anything more than that feels awfully post-hoc.
By blocking ads, you're denying revenue to people whose content you wish to consume. There is no way around this fact. Maybe, by doing this, you will encourage forms of revenue generation that are less intrusive, or maybe you want to encourage a culture where revenue generation isn't necessary, or any of a thousand other 'reasons'. But, I think that if you tell yourself that this is the primary reason that you block ads, as opposed to 'I find ads irritating and don't wish to view them', you should take special care to look really hard for some cognitive bias in your thinking, because you'll almost certainly find some.
Do you have a specific argument against the concept of "turnabout is fair play" here? That it's not okay to be "mean" to "mean" advertisers? I'm not convinced it's an invalid argument here.
Even if you do, I have another disagreement with your characterization of the argument here - on the one hand, "mean" is too mild a term for the sheer willful negligence on behalf of ad networks in preventing a flood of malware, fraud, and untold millions in economic damage at the hands of criminals in these and other fashions.
On the other hand, "mean" is too strong a term for committing basic self defense at the expense of a minor impact to a few revenue streams - when this is lauded as a good thing, to be achieved wherever possible, when it serves the consumer - to be encouraged through competition in a capitalistic society. It's an act which requires no malice whatsoever.
"They were mean in the past so we can be mean to them now," is not really a valid argument.