[grzm]

Great! I'm glad you're supporting sites you use.

And yes, there was an internet before the current ad-driven models promoted by Google and Facebook. However, the sites that were up were effectively subsidized by other business. I'm thinking primarily about media, here. Bloggers had other jobs and blogged on the side. Sites by established media were likewise side projects that were paid for by other divisions of their business, and a lot of that was income was from ads, either print or television. As those businesses have shrunk, and largely because people have been moving online for content, they no longer have the ability to pay for non-revenue generating web presences.

Please don't mistake this as some apologia for ad-based revenue models. I think the current model is largely encouraging some of the worst behavior of human psychology, as well as serious privacy concerns. However, I do think it's important to understand the the economics at play here and not dismiss these economics out of hand and recognize that this needs to be paid for somehow. Many of the people putting Google Ads on their sites or posting on Facebook aren't doing so because they want people to be tracked, for example, but they don't think they have a choice if they want to be able to support what they want to do.

I also think subscriptions do and will continue to play an important role in changing this, so I would encourage you not to dismiss them out of hand. One of the drivers for moving out of "yellow journalism" was the move from paying for each edition to the subscription model. We've seen the reverse of this with the rise of online, ad-based model. Each story has to sell itself and drive engagement, very similar to the edition-based models and tabloids.

[stasilo]

I do understand the economics at play, and I haven't dismissed the subscription model. My point of view is simply this: if you're a media outlet producing content and you can't survive on a subscription based model (or any other model) alone, and have to revert to ads (malicious, annoying ads - I'll admit there are reasonable ways to advertise, but that's not what we're talking about here) to make ends meet, then your content isn't good enough.

That's like making a terrible burger and complaining you're going out of business because people aren't buying it. Tough luck, but that's capitalism.