I think there is a distinction to be made here. Paywalls are fine. If you feel that the Wall Street Journal is worth your time and money then feel free to subs

I think there is a distinction to be made here. Paywalls are fine. If you feel that the Wall Street Journal is worth your time and money then feel free to subscribe to it. But paywalls are a double edged sword. If the source requires people to subscribe to read it, then the vast majority of internet users wont have a chance to read it, and learns to avoid the site. When you share a link in public forum and the link requires a subscription to read it, that means most readers wont have a chance to enjoy the content and they feel frustrated. You can usually find an article about the same topic on a public site. The manner the topic is covered, the depth of the article, the quality of the coverage might be different but it will give the general public an idea about what it is all about. As far as ads and ad blockers. Tivo and tivo like devices are pretty common now that you can skip over tv commercials. I think its the same with web based ad blockers. The truth is that the majority of people who use these things would not have had a positive response to the ad in the first place. What does happen, both on tv and on the web, is that product placements in the content itself becomes more and more common.