Do I also must feel obliged to read every ad page on a magazine? Can't change to another tv channel during the half time? Was I stealing when in the nineties I recorded movies on VHS skipping commercials?

I would say no, and I think websites are not different from media I listed above. If they make or don't make enough money it's not my business. I am free to consume their freely distributed products as I like.

I would totally run an ad blocker that showed me static text or image-based ads. No JavaScript, no animations or video, and I'll happily view ads.

I disagree. I use an adblocker because I refuse to be monetized via freemium tactics. I pay to support some sites that are of interest to me, on most other sites I'm never even given the option.

Advertisements directly lower the quality of any content I'm consuming and I am expecting high quality content.

I both pay for my ISP to connect to the web. I also pay to host web sites that I own which are low cost to me. I also want people to see them and don't run any sort of advertising or data collection on them. It's worth it to me to have my work and information available on the web for other people to use, and even has resulted in me profiting indirectly from it.

If someone wants to turn a profit on their site, that's fine. Do I need to accept whatever they want to serve me when I visit their page? No. Do I need to buy a product from their store if it's not something I'm interested in, even though the payment may go to helping their hosting costs? No.

Remember when the internet was just a bunch of weirdos dialing in and communicating with each other / creating documents about subjects of mutual interest? Who should have been getting paid back then?

I feel like there are some IRC channels that owe me some dividends.

The funny thing is that the content published for free by the weirdos from the past was 100x better that the ad-driven SEO crap we have today.

Also, a lot of that content still exists but it is hidden behind the SEO garbage.

This is just not true and is particularly obtuse. I am not expecting free content using an adblocker, there is often just no way to avoid ads with some products.

I pay for plenty of subscription streaming services “ad free tier”. I buy in app purchases to remove ads. Back when I use to buy Windows PCs, I either bought from the MS store or business laptops to avoid adware.

If I were to ever buy an Android phone (I wouldn’t because Google). It would be a Google device.

I also pay more for an AppleTV than a Roku because half of the Roku screen and the hard coded buttons on the remote are ads.