[alkonaut]

What people are willing to pay for content is I think almost zero.

If we get rid of these privacy invading ads and micropayments/subscriptions don’t take off in a big way (I don’t think they will) then one or two things must happen

1) advertising money remains even though ads are dumber (less narrowly targeted, more fraud etc)

2) there is a lot less money to go around so there must simply be less content.

I think the answer is somewhere in between. I don’t think it’s a pessimistic view that maybe 75% of sites not only risks disappearing but perhaps should. The abundance of “free” content is what makes people unwilling to pay for quality.

[acdha]

I definitely think you’re right on the conclusion: a lot of content sites are going to need to dramatically scale back their size or simply fold. It feels a lot like when VCs pile money into an area and it takes longer for viable business models to win out, only with a much longer run time since the advertising market is so much larger.