Oh, I see your point. about the ads (just turned off uBlock), makes me sad to see that :( It used to be much cleaner than that. I'd be interested to know how much control he has over those.
He has total control. Its his website, he has made the choice to work with scummy advertisers for a larger cut. Make no mistake: He could choose to run adverts that are not immoral and are not pushing malware, and in return he would earn slightly less money.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for him - he's directly benefiting from the same scummy industry he's complaining about.
Wow. I really admired that product, back when I used Windows. That's pretty sad, Paint.NET was doubtlessly a lot of hard work to create, and it's name now besmirched with this bad decision.
homepage: right below his link (paint.net 4.0...) is a "GET IT HERE" picture add which installs crapware
download page: pig green banner "START DOWNLOAD" above his text link for the download.