[hcon]

    > If the only revenue stream you can rely on is ads, 
    > then probably there is a problem with the stuff you 
    > offer not being valuable enough to people.

Not quite.

What people are willing to pay for has a large social/cultural/conditioned element. It's a crux of the entire problem.

The vast majority of people still attribute zero cost to ads. When you start charging $1 for your offering, now you're the one site among your competitors that's charging money. Maybe some HN nerds will care. Whoopdee doo. Nobody else does. The rest of the world isn't going to take their credit card out of their wallet when they can endure a banner ad instead.

Oh wait, they can just install an ad blocker the day they actually do care. Or maybe when their kid or significant other or buddy installs an adblocker on their browser like I did for my parents and they won't even realize the trouble it ever saved them.

See, I think that we will be soon on the cusp of a shift that needs to happen before we can replace ads at all, and it's more than just something a website can do by themselves by adding a paywall or whatever solution that doesn't work for most websites that people seem to conjure up in response to these issues.

[hughperkins]

So what they should do is, what Android apps do:

- when you first go to the website, you get the ad-infested website

- you can pay for the app, and now, no more ads. In Android apps, the amount tends to be crazy low, like less than a cup of coffee. Pay that and get no ads is a no-brainer really...

[shabble]

This assumes the app isn't ransacking your device for as much personal or saleable information it can find, in addition to the nominal purchase fee.

Information leakage between sites and apps on mobile no doubt varies wildly based on your configuration and willingness to accept apps requesting outrageous permissions, but I'd suspect web-apps to be easier to protect yourself from, as a user.