[baddox]

I don't think that's the tragedy of the commons, because there is no "commons." Your website, and your time spent creating content, are not commons in the economic sense. If you want to charge people for your content, it's relatively simple to do so. I don't think you can invoke "tragedy of the commons" when you're choosing to not charge people for your content and then getting upset that some people view your content while choosing to not view ads.

[wvenable]

The commons is the web itself. This is hacker news, we click links on different domains a hundred times every day. Each of those sites could charge you for all their content but then you'd be broke or nobody would make enough money to keep the lights on.

As for the technological means to mitigate that; they aren't at all feasible yet. So the reality is most people support sites by viewing ads and those that don't view ads aren't supporting them at all. Most people, if forced to pay for certain content, just wouldn't bother because it's not worth it for them. I feel like that whenever I hit a paywall limit from a HN link; I enjoy the content but not that much overall.

[NeutronBoy]

> Each of those sites could charge you for all their content but then you'd be broke or nobody would make enough money to keep the lights on.

Indeed, there are discussions on HN that argue that it should explicitly ban paywall articles from being submitted.