[jlarocco]

Why would I do that? Helping people monetize their website isn't my problem.

If ad-blocking eventually forces 95% of "content providers" to shutdown, I don't really care. There's too much blogspam, too many pointless "me too" posts, and just too much crap out there for me to care. If the whole system implodes and goes away it really won't bother me much. The interesting content will be able to survive with subscriptions or pay-per-read or something.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people don't want to admit that most of the web is more a waste of time than anything, and given the option, nobody would pay for most it. Would I pay $x a month to read nautil.us or medium? Yes. Would I subscribe to some idiot who posts his two cents about an article and then links to medium? No.

I buy books and ebooks, pay for music, and pay to watch movies, I don't mind paying for interesting web content. But I'd be stupid to pay for it or not read it when I can easily, legally read it for free.

[johnward]

> I think a lot of people don't want to admit that most of the web is more a waste of time than anything, and given the option, nobody would pay for most it.

I kind of agree with this but yet so much content that I think is worthless still gets massive amounts of traffic. Like those stupid viral facebook lists that make you click through 30 pages, quizzes or whatever the linkbait flavor of the week is. Yet so many of my friends must find some value in them or they wouldn't keep sharing them.

[jlarocco]

But, like I said, most people wouldn't pay for any of those things. They're "valuable" in that they're amusing and silly and free. Charge anything for them, and they would practically disappear overnight. Even people who don't explicitly block the ads are used to ignoring them at this point.

I'd like to see the overlap between people who click through web ads with people who respond to or click through spam email.