These rebuttals always sound like "But if I didn't pay AWS $1k/yr I wouldn't be able to host my family photo album powered by a 15 stack frame deep Nodejs nosql

These rebuttals always sound like "But if I didn't pay AWS $1k/yr I wouldn't be able to host my family photo album powered by a 15 stack frame deep Nodejs nosql-backed container!" > We want it to be profitable to make the stuff we want to consume so that we get better content than hobby/charity content. We, huh? The most enriching content you've ever encountered on the web, was it churned out by the likes of about.com? The places you've had the most meaningful conversations, were they on platforms that regularly purge and actively censor content they deem not to be advertiser friendly? What you are describing sounds a lot more like network television to me. If you just want to zone out in front of the latest episode of "Dancing with the Stars", you already have that option. I get the kneejerk assumption that if something even approaches the potential of being nostalgic, it must be the product of delusion. But that really isn't applicable here, as we all know the ways that technology and infrastructure has been twisted to benefit commercial interests at the expense of everyone else.