There's an entitlement problem, but it isn't on the part of readers. Advertisers, ad networks, and publishers have made so many terrible decisions that they drove readers like me to ad blockers.
I'm not against ads, but I don't want to be tracked. I don't want a 500 word article to download megabytes of crappy javascript.
Publishers are probably costing their audience more in battery life and bandwidth than they are ever making from the ad they are showing.
"Publishers are probably costing their audience more in battery life and bandwidth than they are ever making from the ad they are showing". Have you done any calculation? The bandwidth/battery life cost for serving JS negligible. It's nothing compare to fetching/rendering images/videos, or even your mobile OS.
I've done some rough calculations. Just going by bandwidth, I pay $10 / GB (Google Fi). For that page with 500 words that I want to read that's been bloated out with 5 MB of ads and tracking script, I'm paying 5 cents.
I'm not against ads, but I don't want to be tracked. I don't want a 500 word article to download megabytes of crappy javascript.
Publishers are probably costing their audience more in battery life and bandwidth than they are ever making from the ad they are showing.