[pjc50]

Quite a lot of material on the web is only there because of advertising, not because it's any good. Unsurprisingly the "free market" doesn't work very well when everything has a zero cost associated with it.

The downside of losing ad-supported media will be ad-sponsored media paying to write the content itself.

[gaius]

Right, if Buzzfeed, Upworthy et al vanished overnight, nothing of value would be lost. The following week they would be completely forgotten.

[pjc50]

Buzzfeed, strangely, is about 1% really good investigative journalism.