[jfengel]

The use case is web sites that want to earn income with as little user overhead as possible. Targeted ads have many downsides but they do pay websites without any money at all from the user, or even having to create an account.

So the problem for regular humans is the disappearance of features that they've grown used to having without paying any money. Finding a better way to support themselves has proven remarkably difficult.

[deadbolt]

I feel like many people here wouldn't care if those websites simply stopped existing.

[jfengel]

Certainly a lot of people would care if Facebook disappeared.

There are also a billion other ad-supported web sites, each of which make ten people happy. Not a single one of them would be widely mourned, but 5 billion people would each be saddened by one of them.

[bittercynic]

Many people would, though.

For a long time I thought pinterest was search spam that no human could possibly want to see, but then I met real people in the world who like it and intentionally visit the site. I bet there are people who like ehow and the rest, too.

[int_19h]

The viability of their business model shouldn't be everyone's problem.

[jfengel]

It is their problem when a feature that they like disappears.

They don't care about what happens to the business itself. But they do care about the things the business provides.

If they don't in fact care, then indeed, nothing is lost. But a lot of people will miss a lot of things. Whoever comes up with an alternative that suits the case will make a lot of people happy.

[etchalon]

People made money on advertising before the existence of cookies and ubiquitous tracking. Nature will heal.

[JoshTriplett]

And people had websites before the existence of Internet advertising. Let's set our expectations higher for how much healing is needed.