Comment by WarmWash
3 hours ago
No, my actual framing is that people don't want to pay for what they use, and ad-block created this generational illusion that you can have things of value made by others for free, and it's a good thing.
The system would topple rapidly if people went back to paying directly.
But there is a huge caveat. The ad internet created a classless egalitarian internet where everyone can pay with attention, rather than money. Almost everyone has equal attention, not everyone has equal money. This is taken for granted, but it's very real.
A payment based internet, devoid of ads and tracking, would be back to the rich people having all the coolest services.
But nowhere in any scenario is "free riders counting on suckers to cover their costs".
I don’t know why you’re reducing our options to so few. There are so many ways for people to make a living creating beyond advertising. It’s not even a capitalism thing, this is such a narrow American mindset, especially the idea that everyone objecting to the current state of “advertising” (data fracking and selling) is just entitled.
Also a lot of people are very happy creating things without consistent/“making a living” (or any!) compensation, but they are often exploited by large corporations that want a free ride - or worse, use them as a building block and then find ways to wall them out as they take advantage of people who would otherwise use their tool. See: the FOSS community. Where would we be without VLC?
An example I always use is the Indie rock boom in Canada in the 2000’s, which bled into the US in a very concrete way . A lot of that was actually possible because of the Canadian government funding the arts.