> Most content is worthless. I would suggest that quite a bit of so-called "content" is actually negative value. Consumption of this negative value is done for

> Most content is worthless. I would suggest that quite a bit of so-called "content" is actually negative value. Consumption of this negative value is done for a variety of reasons (paying a minor cost for an indirect social benefit, for example ("I wanted to participate when people talk about #{current_pop_culture}")). These negative values are only worthwhile when the cost is small enough, and we've recently seen advertising raise those costs past important thresholds. The initial reaction is an attempt to lower the cost by installing an ad blocker. In the long run, this will simply lead to a re-evaluation that the rising costs outweigh the benefits. Any attempt to "monetize" something that was previous done for free is by definition imposing a cost on the people involved. This current trend of "ad supported" stuff is really just a complicated type of rent seeking. Rents are only justifiable when scarce resources are involved, so it should be obvious that most interactions on the internet cannot be monetized (anything that has effectively zero marginal cost is not scarce).