[ACow_Adonis]

Your post is literally the content I'm reading that you claim no one would produce without ads, and it's unsupported by ads.

And again (I feel like a broken record on this site), that's a totally inaccurate history of the internet.

Content arrived first, THEN the advertising companies arrived.

[cameronbrown]

Hacker News is not mass media. Plus don't forget Y Combinator funded many ad-based platforms. HN isn't free either.

[ACow_Adonis]

A fair point.

So I see two takeaway questions: would we be fine/better off without mass media funded by advertising(it's obvious what my answer to this would be since I don't generally listen to it or watch it, though I acknowledge it going away won't likely happen).

And the second, would content we like to consume/ be worthy of consumption be produced anyway, and my contention is that it would still, just like it did in the past and continues in the current (some free, some paid for), as can be seen in the history of books, early internet, street art, leisure, bloggers, hobbyists, cinema, documentaries, etc.

There might be a third point of mine, which is that we're actually suffering from a glut of content and competition for eyeballs: so to me, worrying about that content disappearing is a bit like worrying about dying of thirst while drowning in a freshwater lake.

[cameronbrown]

I don't know, really. I don't want to go back to a time where artists struggle to eat, to make a metaphor. Independent creators are using advertising revenue now too.