Many of the freely available things I consume online are funded by voluntary support from dedicated groups of fans, on patreon etc, and which spread mostly by w

Many of the freely available things I consume online are funded by voluntary support from dedicated groups of fans, on patreon etc, and which spread mostly by word of mouth. This requires neither a subscription for the content in question nor any purchase of it. Thus, at least one business model exists which can sustain freely available content without relying on ads, and thus, not all free content would disappear if we banned ads.