Just because a company has found a way to make money off of ads doesn't mean we're morally obligated to look at those ads, nor even incidentally be exposed to them. Consider an example applied outside of the internet.
Let's say I open a restaurant that advertises itself as "FREE PIZZA", and I give them a free pizza if asked but I also hand them a 2cm thick stack of ad flyers. Is it morally wrong to take that stack of advertising and just throw it away without looking at it while still eating the pizza? I (and I think most people) would say that throwing away the ads is totally acceptable; they're the fools giving away the free pizza with the hope that they'll drive business for the advertisers. If the free-pizza shop goes out of business because everyone throws away the ad flyers, that's something we consider totally ok because that's probably not a great business approach.
The only reason we consider ads online different is because it's become so normalized. We the users have come to expect many services for free, and the folks making their money by including the ads have become vocally entitled to users eyeballs and the money it makes them. They say "my business will fail if you block my ads; you owe me your eyeballs." Yeah, that's not my problem; I'm an audience member who owes the content-provider/service nothing and who's agreed to nothing (TOS's and EULA's have tried to move the goalposts on this after decades, don't be fooled), the only party the content-provider/service is actually doing business with is their advertising network, so they should figure it amongst themselves.
Let's say I open a restaurant that advertises itself as "FREE PIZZA", and I give them a free pizza if asked but I also hand them a 2cm thick stack of ad flyers. Is it morally wrong to take that stack of advertising and just throw it away without looking at it while still eating the pizza? I (and I think most people) would say that throwing away the ads is totally acceptable; they're the fools giving away the free pizza with the hope that they'll drive business for the advertisers. If the free-pizza shop goes out of business because everyone throws away the ad flyers, that's something we consider totally ok because that's probably not a great business approach.
The only reason we consider ads online different is because it's become so normalized. We the users have come to expect many services for free, and the folks making their money by including the ads have become vocally entitled to users eyeballs and the money it makes them. They say "my business will fail if you block my ads; you owe me your eyeballs." Yeah, that's not my problem; I'm an audience member who owes the content-provider/service nothing and who's agreed to nothing (TOS's and EULA's have tried to move the goalposts on this after decades, don't be fooled), the only party the content-provider/service is actually doing business with is their advertising network, so they should figure it amongst themselves.