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That is quite unrealistic though. You either need to pay up or put up with the consequences of wanting a free service, such as dealing with the never ending bat

That is quite unrealistic though. You either need to pay up or put up with the consequences of wanting a free service, such as dealing with the never ending battle of blocking ads. I wish companies would offer the opportunity to pay what you want to remove ads. People with adblock are probably more likely to pay for it, because anyone not running ads is probably not bothered by them anyway. And people running adblock are unmonetisable. So a little bit of money is better than no money.

wpietri 4y ago
It's not particularly unrealistic. Advertising is popular on the web for historical reasons. Content delivery advanced much faster than payment, so for ~20 years ads were the easiest way for many sites to pay the bills. Nobody was sure what else to do. But that's no longer the case. Soft paywalls have been around for circa a decade, so selling subscriptions while letting your content self-market is viable. Content creators also have plenty of direct revenue options. Patreon is doing something like $2 billion/year in revenue for creators. Twitch became a huge platform without ads, just allowing direct cash transfers from fans to creators. And that's not even counting the ~$50 billion/year now spent on streaming and VOD in the US. On the other side of it, per-ad revenue has been falling for decades. I helped start a content site and keep in touch with people in that area. The reason so many ad-supported sites look like absolute shit is that to make any money, you keep needing to up the amount of ads you run, making them more and more annoying to overcome learned ad blindness. So advertising is slowly strangling itself, leading to lots of people using ad-blockers, and counter-ad-blocker technology becoming widespread. What sane person would start an ad-funded content business today? A world-wide web with little or no advertising is not only plausible, it looks like that's where we're headed.
albrewer 4y ago
The main problem is I don't have the ability to only pay for the content I consume.
disintegore 4y ago
Who says I want a free service? A lot of the time there is no paid tier.
- chopin 4y ago
  Or the paid tier is infested with ads and/or tracking.
  - disintegore 4y ago
    Microsoft littered its frickin operating system with ads. Something you (officially at least) are expected to pay full price for. It boggles the mind that people continue to accept this treatment.
    - zamadatix 4y ago
      I'd be willing to bet most Windows users probably haven't even thought about Windows costing money - somewhere in the high 90 percent range. For the last 13 years upgrades have been free and new purchases have the price built in. The only exceptions are those that actually know about other operating systems and look for the option to buy without or people that do custom builds. At least when one signs up for e.g. Hulu you're forced to realize different rates include different things. With Windows most don't even realize they had a choice. It does lead to the question why people are fine buying a PC then having ads but again I'm not sure many really understand (or necessarily care) about the difference between ads in the start menu or ads in something like the browser, it's all just "the computer" and ads have just always been a part of a computer for most so what's to make them expect otherwise.

wpietri 4y ago

It's not particularly unrealistic. Advertising is popular on the web for historical reasons. Content delivery advanced much faster than payment, so for ~20 years ads were the easiest way for many sites to pay the bills. Nobody was sure what else to do. But that's no longer the case. Soft paywalls have been around for circa a decade, so selling subscriptions while letting your content self-market is viable. Content creators also have plenty of direct revenue options. Patreon is doing something like $2 billion/year in revenue for creators. Twitch became a huge platform without ads, just allowing direct cash transfers from fans to creators. And that's not even counting the ~$50 billion/year now spent on streaming and VOD in the US. On the other side of it, per-ad revenue has been falling for decades. I helped start a content site and keep in touch with people in that area. The reason so many ad-supported sites look like absolute shit is that to make any money, you keep needing to up the amount of ads you run, making them more and more annoying to overcome learned ad blindness. So advertising is slowly strangling itself, leading to lots of people using ad-blockers, and counter-ad-blocker technology becoming widespread. What sane person would start an ad-funded content business today? A world-wide web with little or no advertising is not only plausible, it looks like that's where we're headed.

albrewer 4y ago

The main problem is I don't have the ability to only pay for the content I consume.

disintegore 4y ago

Who says I want a free service? A lot of the time there is no paid tier.

chopin 4y ago
Or the paid tier is infested with ads and/or tracking.
- disintegore 4y ago
  Microsoft littered its frickin operating system with ads. Something you (officially at least) are expected to pay full price for. It boggles the mind that people continue to accept this treatment.
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    I'd be willing to bet most Windows users probably haven't even thought about Windows costing money - somewhere in the high 90 percent range. For the last 13 years upgrades have been free and new purchases have the price built in. The only exceptions are those that actually know about other operating systems and look for the option to buy without or people that do custom builds. At least when one signs up for e.g. Hulu you're forced to realize different rates include different things. With Windows most don't even realize they had a choice. It does lead to the question why people are fine buying a PC then having ads but again I'm not sure many really understand (or necessarily care) about the difference between ads in the start menu or ads in something like the browser, it's all just "the computer" and ads have just always been a part of a computer for most so what's to make them expect otherwise.