Everything of value can be paid for. The worth of an ad impression or click is measured in fractions of cents and the adds up to peanuts per month. Publishers

Everything of value can be paid for. The worth of an ad impression or click is measured in fractions of cents and the adds up to peanuts per month. Publishers can just charge those peanuts directly and I’ll be happy to pay up (plus they’ll get more without the dozens of middlemen in the advertising/cancer industry). But seems like publishers are greedy and want more than what the ads pay them, so that’s why subscription-based content sites don’t work at scale. For example, “Le Figaro” (a French newspaper) asks 9€/month for their subscription, despite making less that 1€/month from serving ads to me, so obviously I don’t subscribe and get by with blocking their (really shit, think Outbrain/Taboola “related content”) ads. On the other hand, I’ve recently started supporting creators on Patreon at the tune of 1$/video. It’s something I can afford to do for every creator I watch, and while being an insignificant amount by itself it would be a significant bag of money should every viewer pay (and definitely more than they can even dream of making from ads).