[sdthjbvuiiijbb]

You've missed the point of the comment that you've replied to. There's a well known adverse selection effect because the people who would pay for no ads are exactly the people who you most want to be able to serve ads to: people with lots of disposable income, and people who are power users who see the most ads.

As a result the actual amount that they would need to charge for an ad-free version is higher than the average revenue per user, possibly significantly so.

edit: you can look at YouTube premium for an example of this in practice. It's $16/mo for no ads. That's around 2-3x or more what their revenue per user is.

[tgma]

I also think the figure GP quoted are not US, but lumped together with depressed "developed" economies. US numbers should be a multiple of that.

[bigmadshoe]

Fair point. I think it depends on the person. I know plenty of people without much disposable income who still pay for several subscriptions.

[wahnfrieden]

Advertisers don’t care about disposable income they care about spending habits even if the buyer is irresponsible and can’t afford it

[bigmadshoe]

Exactly, so hacker news readers are not necessarily the people who would need to be charged the most to remove advertisements. I barely shop.

[hvb2]

That's also how you get to little disposable income. It's choices people make and that's their right but it does look odd occasionally.

[bigmadshoe]

The amount of money you spend doesn’t affect your disposable income, just your savings (beyond calculating interest). Unless we have different definitions of income or disposable.