[vicbrooker]

I can't see a way for this style of design to be feasible that doesn't rely on a subscription-based business model.

As long as users allow free + advertising generally be the way to for build a dominant tech company then I would assume anyone that tries to compete by not optimising for advertising (eg. reducing friction for users) will lose. Which is a damn shame.

Based on my limited knowledge of the history of news media, theres a cycle between free + advertising and paid + high quality. Intuitively it should apply to other verticals too, and I hope that, in reality, it does.

[majewsky]

For many kinds of services it can work in parallel. For example, there are ad-supported mail providers like Google, while I consciously chose a subscription-based mail provider (posteo.de) whom I trust to act in my best interest.

The only thing where this would not work so well is social networks, due to the network effect.