SO doesn't care about ad-blockers.
We entered into an agreement with Stack Overflow users long ago that we wouldn’t subject them to low-quality ads. [...] But really: anything that doesn’t speak specifically to the Stack Overflow audience is not permitted. We also don’t accept rich media like animated ads, expandable ads, or video, which are the norm for most publishers today. This strict policy means we leave money on the table, but our team wants to protect Stack Overflow from those kinds of ads, as they run the risk of alienating that established trust.
[...]
The truth is: we don’t care if our users use ad blockers on Stack Overflow. More accurately: we hope that they won’t, but we understand that some people just don’t like ads. Our belief is that if someone doesn’t like them, and they won’t click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them– plus, serving ads to people who won’t click on them harms campaign performance.
Many of the reasons why we block ads in the first place are eliminated:
- Obnoxious, in-your-face ads aren't allowed.
- Much lower risk of ads being a vector for malware.
- Ads aren't that much of a burden on bandwidth.
Also: Does Stack Exchange use "acceptable" ads according to Adblock Plus? Yes, they do.
Lastly, a good portion of the ads are community-adscommunity-ads, created by us users to showcase things we think might be of interest to us.
I personally disable my adblockers on SE sites, and I don't find the experience to be degraded. Then again, I do have >200 rep on the sites I frequent the most, so I do see decreased ads in the first place.
You can vote on the ads you see (look for the thumbs-up/down buttons that appear in the top-left corner when you hover on an ad):
