[hammerzeit]

Forget ethical questions, then, and let's talk economics.

If you're not generating revenue for them, why should anybody who hopes to make money off of content choose to show you anything? What value do you represent to them? Why should they believe you?

[flavor8]

I'll take "your broken business model is not my problem" for 200 points.

There are plenty of places that I can buy content that I'm interested in. I'd far rather pay for quality content than put up with ads all over the web. As a plus side, paid for content might fix the journalism crisis.

The death of content farms is not going to be a huge loss to the web ecosystem. Anything useful enough that people are willing to pay for it will survive.

[s73v3r]

No, that's a fucking cop out. Answer the question: why do you feel entitled to view the content that others have worked to create for free? Why should we not expect the same of you? Why should we not expect you to work for free?

[flavor8]

It's not a fucking cop out. You make your content available on the web without a paywall, on the assumption that my client will serve ads. Well, guess what, it doesn't.

At no point did you contract with me to require me to view ads. Your terms of service (which you didn't even require me to agree to) did not require that I don't block ads.

Your business model is based on the assumption that I will gladly view ads. I won't. Hundreds of millions of others won't. Your business model is broken. The market is clearly not supporting the amount of content that is available. Don't try to play the ethics card; the advertising industry is as sleazy as they come.

If your content is valuable enough, put up a paywall and people will pay for it.

[Nadya]

> I'd far rather pay for quality content than put up with ads all over the web.

Completely contradicts your claim of "for free".

How do I know it's worth my money before I try it? When I'm purchasing a car, I can take it off the lot for a test drive. In the 90's, video games had demos (and now that demos are rare, I almost never buy video games I haven't played at a friends' first). When I purchase food - I know what I'm paying for. I know what I'm getting. Many purchases I make "guarantee my money back if I'm not totally satisfied with the product or service".

When I purchase a journalistic article - I have no idea if the quality would be worth my money. I have no idea if it's going to be well written.

Nowadays most articles I read contain factual errors, stretches of the truth, extreme political slants, author biases, and general muckery of something I would not pay for. But I didn't know that it was something so bad I would use to wipe my ass instead of reading it until after I had already read it.

There are websites I use that are 100% free and donation-only supported. They not only meet but exceed their monthly donation goals consistently. These are sites where the users give a damn whether the server is still online next month or not. The website has been online for the past 5 years and there has never been financial troubles.

Perhaps instead of using an "ad-based" business model websites should use a "value-based" business model. Where, if the website is valuable enough to the users, the users will choose to sustain it out of their own desire to continue to use the site.

If your journalistic site doesn't offer any additional value to users. You sink - and nobody would care.

I wouldn't bat an eyelid if the entire Gawker media conglomerate crashed and burned and had to shut down. I wouldn't care at all - and you wouldn't see me donating money to keep it online - because they provide no value to me.

[andygates]

Hang on, if this content is so precious to you, why are you forcing three "click the monkey"s and a cryptowall on me? If we're talking responsibility, that's where the greater harm lies.

Fix ads and the adblocker problem goes away.

[beerbajay]

> why should anybody who hopes to make money off of content choose to show you anything?

Nobody is forcing them to use advertizing to support their work/site. If they're not making money, they should change their business model.