Comment by autoexec
3 days ago
> Unfortunately the "beast" is the Internet content itself.
The idea that the internet couldn't exist without ads is a myth that needs to die. The internet existed, thrived, and was awesome long before it became infested with ads. An ad free internet would be different in some ways, but it'd still be great and filled with endless amounts of content. Your example of youtube kind of proves the point. It was so much more fun before youtube became all about profit and people just posted videos for fun, or out of genuine passion. Not having obnoxious youtube ads doesn't even stop creators from getting paid since they can still take donations or sell merch.
Most people are cheap (or broke). As such they will take for free when they can. In markets like that, ads win out. You should take a look at what happens to human behavior when you change a price from free to tiny (like a penny or a dollar) but non-zero.
I'm happy when a news website gives me two buttons: watch ads, or pay 3.99/m for a subscription, even though I usually click on watch ads. Agency matters.
You're quite right: that newfangled Patreon nonsense is a flash in the pan that will never catch on. There's no way anyone can be successful getting hundreds of people to pay them $5 (or even $1) per month. Ads are the only way to run the Internet.
What? It's 2026, not 2016? And Patreon has been running very successfully for over a decade? Huh. Whaddayaknow?
Patreon is not the issue.
1% of people covering most the costs for the other 99% of people is. Which is what we find when looking at patreon conversions
I started closing any web page that had an ad on it, even if I wanted the content, right when they appeared. I loath ads. Yet, I disagree with you.
While I pay for software, music, movies, etc, I think the vast majority of people either can't or won't. The internet would be vastly different if there were no ads because the amount of content would be greatly reduced.
I still want no ads. I just don't think it'd be as small of a change as you suggest.
> The internet would be vastly different if there were no ads because the amount of content would be greatly reduced.
In terms of quantity it wouldn't be noticeable to you at all. It'd still be more than you could ever consume in your lifetime. I saw the internet before ads and it was still filled with just about everything you see today. The content itself was actually better in many cases (technical limitations being what they were). It was certainly less harmful.
The only thing I really think we'd have to worry about losing is some of the youtube content made with extremely high production costs but even some of those channels started out producing the same content with lower production values and slowly improved the presentation as their channel grew which could still happen without ads through donations and other strategies.
The vast majority of the content we'd lose on the internet without ads is the stuff companies put out there for no reason other than because they want to make money, as it turns out, that stuff is mostly trash anyway. It's what brought us click bait, entire content farms of trash, the millions of AI generated websites filled with hallucinations that drown out the actual information you're looking for, etc.
Getting rid of ads on the internet wouldn't make all the bad stuff would go away though. Companies already often have other perverse incentives for putting stuff on the internet, but at least we wouldn't be getting the obnoxious ads and surveillance capitalism on top of that.
Think of your yt premium sub as a donation to the creators you enjoy.
What, you don't have a sub?