[shanecleveland]

Better yet, if you don't agree with the method of monetization of a website, don't visit it. Don't whine about it. Don't use an ad blocker. I routinely back out of websites with obtrusive advertising. I find an alternate source, and reward them with my visit.

[skydhash]

The content is for free. I just strip out what I don't like. Very much like when I was young and cutting out car pictures out of magazines. Except that the magazines did the smart thing and asked for payment first.

[shanecleveland]

So the car pictures you cut out were not free. Not a good comparison.

Unless you are saying you would be willing to pay up front for every website you want to visit. Is that right?

[skydhash]

Very much. I already pay for my self hosted software, I pay for cloud storage, I also pay for various services around the web. I used to pay for medium (when it was good), if my workflow was dependent on a piece of software and I needed to pay to have access to a good support forum, I'd do that too.

I'm grateful for the fact that so many people are open to share their knowledge for free. But even in this case, I'm paying for the internet to visit their websites. And for the amount of information I get from HN, I'd pay for a membership subscription.

One is entitled to add ads to one's webpages. But the computer is mine and I'm totally free to not display them. The same way I'm free to mute my TV and switch channels when the ads start. Or skip forward on the podcast. It's my personal computing/entertainment space, I decide what I'm exposed to.

[shanecleveland]

I agree. As I said in another comment, you have the right to not visit sites in the same way you have the right to change your TV channel. But what you cannot do on your TV is strip away ads and force a channel to only show programming.

My pie-in-the-sky theory is that if enough people avoided "abusive" ad sites, they would change their behavior. But if ad blockers are used instead, the bad sites get more abusive to circumvent them, and the responsible sites become unsustainable.

[solardev]

I'd rather just be able to pay them, like EU Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, etc.