[octobus2021]

"The Internet" is full of junk because nobody wants to pay for content, so it is paid for by the advertisers who then want their junk fed to the content consumers. Want cleaner Internet? Pay content creators. Problem solved.

[iamdamian]

This is part of the story, but it's not all of it. Newspapers and paid cable have had ads for as long as I can remember, even for paying subscribers. So do some tiers of paid Hulu. Paid versions of Windows have started to see more intrusive in-OS ads, and we see ad-supported versions of the Kindle put on the market even though the original Kindle had no ads.

I signed up for a popular online magazine just this week and even when I'm logged in, I see ads begging me to subscribe.

Finally, of course, most of the popular services (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google) don't even offer an ability to pay instead of viewing ads, so consumers can't meaningfully express this preference.

[InCityDreams]

The internet i see and use is effin' great, and free for myself. Apart from my isp, tax and any required hardware, I pay for nothing, and thanks to various blockers i see no ads. Perhaps you may be looking in the wrong places, or have set yoir sights too high?

[octobus2021]

The article describes a plain-text, fast, and user-friendly site (sports new/scores/whatever) and is titled "Plain-text Internet is coming". My point is that the plain-text Internet will NOT be coming while content creators have a need to support themselves with ads. The author himself says "I might add an ad eventually" to support hosting costs. What if the site takes off and becomes a for-profit operation, where do you think the revenue will come from?