[mcpackieh]

> websites shouldn't be able to make money from advertising at all.

This is the case. Advertising is a scourge, psychological warfare waged by corporations against our minds and wallets. Advertisers have no moral qualms, they will exploit any psychololgical weakness to shill products, no matter how harmful. Find a "market" of teenagers with social issues? Show them ads of happy young people frolicking with friends to make them buy your carbonated sugar water; never mind that your product will rot their teeth and make them fat. Advertisers don't care about whether products are actually good for people, all they care about is successful shilling.

Advertising is warfare waged by corporations against people and pretending otherwise makes you vulnerable to it. To fight back effectively we must use adblockers and advocate for advertising bans. If your website cannot exist without targeted advertising, then it is better for it to not exist.

[tempestn]

Think about what it would mean to not have any advertising whatsoever. Most current large brands would essentially be entrenched forever. No matter how good a new product or service is, it's going to be almost impossible to reach a sustainable scale through purely organic growth starting from zero. Advertising in some form is necessary for an economy to function.

[dageshi]

I don't mind ads, they're not great, but they're not the end of the world either, they paid for a lot of useful services over the years.

[rented_mule]

What's a viable business model for web search other than ads (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Naver, etc.) or paid search (Kagi)? If paid search is the only option left, is it okay that poor people can't use the web? Is it okay if poor people don't get access to news?

Oh, and they don't get to vote because voting day and locations can't be advertised by the government, especially in targeted mailings that are personalized with your party affiliation and location. The US Postal Service will also collapse, so those mailings can't go out, even if allowed. At least the rich can still search for their polling location on the web [<- sarcasm].

None of that is okay with me. More/better regulation? Yes! But our world doesn't know how to function without ads. Being absolute about banning ads is unrealistic and takes focus away from achieving better regulation, thereby playing into the hands of the worst advertisers.

[mcpackieh]

> What's a viable business model for web search other than ads (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Naver, etc.) or paid search (Kagi)?

Not my problem. Those companies, and any other with business models reliant on advertising, don't have a right to exist. If your business can't be profitable without child labor, your business has no right to exist. This is no different.