[nerdjon]

If you are going to quote me, maybe quote the entire line?

> and it is clear that most people are not going to pay for the things they have grown accustom to getting for free.

The unfortunate reality is that many people have been conditioned to get content for free. We can complain about it all we want but the vast majority of people are not going to suddenly going to start paying for something that was once free.

You're right nothing is stopping them from selling physical goods and services, but wether or not that actually turns into making money is another story.

I feel like if you are getting free content an ad is a fair tradeoff. IF that ad is not invading your privacy.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

> the vast majority of people are not going to suddenly going to start paying for something that was once free.

Then they didn't really want it did they?

People used to run websites for non-monetary reasons, the ad model completely changes the landscape.

[nerdjon]

I don't know if that is really a strong argument, I feel like there are likely a lot of people that just simply couldn't afford to subscribe to all of the content that they get online.

It isn't reasonable to expect that you would pay every website when you go to it.

However if we are really going to make the argument that they didn't want it... well why are they going there? If they didn't want it, they would have never gone to it, they would have never seen the ads, and this entire conversation is moot.

I also don't really buy that websites were run for non-monetary reasons except in the very very early days of the internet. Running a website isn't free, sure you can easily enough stick some static content in S3 and it's dirt cheap to run. But it's still money that you are spending putting something out there. That is before even looking at the time you spent working on it.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

you're not hearing me.

people used to build websites for reasons other than money, people would just be consuming different content.

> why are they going there?

because it's free.

> Running a website isn't free

Making money is not the only reason to spend money on something. That's the point.

[nerdjon]

so what you are saying is the only people that deserve to put content on the internet are those privileged enough to be able to afford to put it out for free while they pay to run the servers?

Or privileged enough to have the technical knowledge to be able to run it very cheaply?

Or have the privilege to spend the time making content with out any concern of finances? People that can chose to spend time making free content instead of needing to work another job or some other source of money.

I'm sorry but it is a fantastic ideal that people would just do things without any concern about making money but that isn't the world we live in. If I were to make content I would at least like to break even so I am not spending money for nothing.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

Privilege is the word of the times, 10 years ago you would have couched it in different language and in 10 years it would be yet another set of wording.

Apparently it's a fantastic ideal that people will do things for motivations other than money. I'm going to suggest that if you believe that you either hang out with the wrong people, or people just don't like you.