[pyython]

This is exactly what I've been thinking about re:the recent slew of adblock news on HN. Content creation and distribution have real costs, and I see other, far more intrusive models developing to combat loss of ad revenue if ad blockers become the norm.

Not to mention the contribution to rising income inequality/decreasing social mobility. If all useful information is behind a paywall, only those that can afford it will have access - further increasing the return to capital.

All this to say, be careful what you wish for...

[hardwaresofton]

Yes, except the most useful content out there is available largely for free (or would cost a crazy small amount to keep funded, if the userbase contributed as little as $1 or $3).

In particular, I'm thinking of:

Wikipedia

Google

Also, maybe it will lead people to start putting trust in offline archives of information, which wouldn't be terrible either.

Honestly, a lot of the "content" on the internet is garbage/not productive. I can at the very least argue that lots of bandwidth that's being used on the internet is just watching shit that's usually not educational.

[pyython]

Google runs the largest ad network on the planet. It's absolutely critical to their business model. Wikipedia is great, but they produce no content of their own and lack any sort of curation. Of course there's a lot of crap on the Internet, but I personally find many types of well-curated, professional content extremely valuable. I personally would be willing to pay for much of it, but I'm in a better position to do so than many - which is exactly my point.

[hardwaresofton]

My point was that if Google decided to change it's business model, and charged something like a $1 for a monthly subscription to using it's search services, it would be more than safe.

I don't think the fact that wikipedia produces it's own content is relevant, and whether it lacks curation being relevant either. Regardless of those two facts, it is immensely useful. The majority of articles, especially on highly technical/useful topics (like farming techniques) are mostly accurate.

Just because some may not be in a position to buy/afford something doesn't mean that everyone should endure inefficiency. Also, depending on the price, the truly important information would still be worth it. I don't think what's going to keep the less fortunate from using web services is a reasonably priced web service.

Currently, you can get a VPS for roughly $10/month, and a domain name for something like $70 (a .com usually costs this much I think). If you had monthly subscribers who were asked to pay $1 a month, the amount of subscribers to keep you in business (nevermind that today's tech can easily scale up to thousands of users on one box), is not high at all.

[Retra]

Just because you create something doesn't mean you deserve to get paid for it. You have to create something people actually want to pay you for. And if they do that, then getting paid shouldn't be a problem, should it?

More importantly: just because I look at something doesn't mean I should have to pay for it. You can't know if an article is crap until after you read it. That's the nature of dealing in information -- you can't sell information without first giving people something valuable for free and building trust. If you violate your customer's trust, you can no longer sell information.

That's the state of internet advertising today.