> But hidden ads are far more sinister, and thus - should result in far more people coming up with ways to remove them. But how? Give me an example on a site l

> But hidden ads are far more sinister, and thus - should result in far more people coming up with ways to remove them. But how? Give me an example on a site like my (admittedly far from perfect) startup, http://lump.co http://lump.co. How would you identify an ad which posed as a gallery, or posed as a photo in a gallery? There would be no way to identify it - at all. On a blog, an entire post could be an advertisement for a product. They wouldn't bother labeling them - to avoid the ad block. The only person that loses is the consumer who can no longer trust what they read. > At this point, hosting is basically free I envy those kinds of sites! My S3 bills were $1200 a month (switched to Incero). I am taking in 2,000 new gallery posts, each with 50 photos that I download, per day, filling 2tb of disk every month or so. Far from free for startups that are data or processing heavy! Even for a blog, WPengine, various SaaS offerings you need, and misc stuff can easily reach $100+, before you add Cloudflare.. And that's before we even consider the human time that goes into it. Running a site ain't free. > Flattr and Gittip This is the best approach. I hope the world becomes comfortable paying tiny amounts for content. Sadly I feel like that's a ways away, especially for the non-US demo. And I hope those systems support refunds because often I'm disappointed by content once I get a chance to really read it. :) p.s. I'm not trying to make this about me. I am just an example of a common case.