[pennybanks]

i mean in the near future if all ads are preventable. we probably will just be paying to use internet products. i mean its the only reason its free right? or maybe the isp will become the new apple google fb and they will provide browsers and websites. and most likely these isp will lock exclusives. eek

[Reubachi]

we DO pay for internet and internet products, in so far as actual internet and actual internet products. I pay ISP, I pay VPN, I pay some security services.

further in my humble poor opinion; If the only way to secure funding/guarantee your product/job/life is by having completely irrelevant, predatory ads hosted in your space, maybe you should go int oa different field, or not expect to make money off of a niche hobby application.

Hosting a website, app, service, (if not a paid service), should be "cost of doing business". Or "cost of maintaining a hobby which I'm broadcasting." It is a great disservice to our children that the "default" in life is "you will pay for this ,and you will watch brain rot ads"

[_nalply]

Yeah, all commercial outfits need revenue, and if they don't have ad-based revenue they need their users to be customers paying for the service. Right.

This said, I see three more ways for free (like gratis) services (at least free for users):

1. Government-funded services. If some online services are deemed to be very important for public wellbeing, the government might decide to pay for a service or to run it themselves. One example is public databases like a list of medication covered by health insurance.

2. Non-profits. They can live off voluntary donations from users, governments, and companies.

3. Hobbyist-supported services. People work pro bono to support a service and some hobbyists even pay for third-party services (like hosting).

These are not sharply discerned categories. A service might nominally be run by a non-profit, but the non-profit is staffed by hobbyists and the government might pay for hosting and other costs. Such a service would be a government-funded hobbyist service run by a non-profit.

[NoGravitas]

If you're not trying to be global scale and/or the only site in your market segment, you can go pretty far off of voluntary donations. As far as I know, even the largest Mastodon sites are Patreon/Liberapay/etc funded.