3 ms·

Maybe. The catch-22 of this is that subscription models more-or-less can't work while ad-based business models exist. If someone can profit by taking your paywa

Maybe. The catch-22 of this is that subscription models more-or-less can't work while ad-based business models exist. If someone can profit by taking your paywalled content, slapping ads on it, and putting that up on a free site, then someone will do that, destroying your business model. We need to destroy ads as a viable business model before we can even try exploring other models. Installing an ad blocker is ethical.

yamtaddle 4y ago
> The catch-22 of this is that subscription models more-or-less can't work while ad-based business models exist. I suspect this dynamic also applies to software, including, perhaps counterintuitively, FOSS software. "Free" (but ad-supported) competes for attention with both paid and free (actually free). Interest in developing FOSS is lower, I would wager, when interest in using FOSS is lower, so we likely get less and worse FOSS in a world with lots of ad-supported (mostly spyware) software, than one without it.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  We need to stop calling ad-supported stuff "free". Because it's certainly not. You're just paying with a different currency.