[mindslight]

As someone who has used an ad blocker for over 10 years, I have a strong opinion about the ad industry.

Die out, go away, and let us get back to the point where the motivation to publish something on the 'net stems from the desire to share knowledge. To hell with the cacophonous status quo of doing the bare minimum to trick people into giving you their attention in order to fill their head with garbage for a fraction of a penny. And if hosting honest content using central servers costs too much to be sustainable, then let that dead-end approach leave us and make room for decentralized software to deliver information.

[netrus]

I dont get your comment. Not content delivery is expensive, but content creation Do you want a net without professional journalism?! Or do you prefer paywalls? Or donations?

I am in favor of a great coordinated blackout campaign by the large content providers. Dont want to see ads? Fine, pay a dollar via Paypal to see the site - or go away.

[mindslight]

The sheer majority of 'professional journalism' consists of:

1. Rewording press releases from industry/government. The actual writers of this content are being paid by industry/government, and the content itself is essentially an ad.

2. Soap opera designed to provoke fear or controversy, both "political" and not (see #1)

3. Emotional tourism fluff pieces to steal attention (see my original comment)

4. Pumping the latest startup fad (see #1)

5. Self-important circle jerks about the 'knowledge economy' and other superiority-assured deck chair distractions on the USSG (see #1)

6. Rewording of actual information that was not created by a journalist to be "more accessible", with the end result being a distorted oversimplification. This is essentially a subcase of #3 where the emotion is superficial "understanding".

7. Direct copying ("excerpts") of other 'professional journalism' with a link back, ad infinitum.

So no, I'm not terribly worried about losing something we don't actually have.

The occasional story that has genuine public interest (eg the hard facts about NSA) would be reported by concerned parties anyway. I doubt many of those ad views are paying the actual reporter, Snowden, who acted out of moral imperative. And while I'm happy the journalist middlemen are working to keep public attention on this subject, this is only necessary from being in a zero sum game with the above. These middlemen are actually delaying, redacting, and muddling specific technical facts on the current state of NSA's malevolence that would be quite nice for us to know.