How I Experience Web Today (2021)

What I always don't understand is: So you don't want to pay for online content, but you also want to use an ad blocker. In summary, you don't want the author or creator to get paid?

Personally, I hate ads, so I pay. I have digital subscriptions to the newspapers I read. I have YouTube Premium (because I spend an ungodly amount of time on that site).

But for people who want to do neither... what's your idea?

There is a whole lot more to this than just whether content creators or publishes should get paid, and whether there should be ad blockers (and whether they get paid).

There are people who have been fed up by this because they remembered how the web was like in the late 90s, before social media pushes became the dominant experience. People have formulated ideas around the Small Web (https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/), or even opted out of the browser ecosystem entirely with Gemini (https://geminiprotocol.net/) or keep the torch burning for Gopher (https://hackaday.com/2021/09/28/gopher-the-competing-standar...)

From there, it is also a short hop and skip away to folks working on local-first (https://localfirstweb.dev/), decentralization, collapse computing (https://100r.co/site/philosophy.html and http://collapseos.org/)

I get that, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people whose job content is, and who may have had the same job in the 90s, e.g. newspaper journalists.

So I'm asking those who don't want to pay for a subscription, but want to use an ad blocker: How does it work?

As said, I opted for paying the creator directly, because I hate the ad ecosystem. Seems like a lot of people want to do neither, but still expect their content to magically exist.

Lots of us don’t want to pay a dime because it’s like negotiating with terrorists. Do you really expect the people that ruined the web to act nice after the first round of extortion goes well for them? Many paid services still have ads and dark patterns. Those that don’t are waiting for a position of strength (whether that is a market monopoly or just user sunk-cost fallacy to kick in) and then the enshittification will start.

My heart goes out to journalists, etc, but I can’t really help them by paying their bosses because the bosses are not interested in journalism. If you think that paying into rent-seeking protection rackets is any kind of permanent solution you’re probably going to be disappointed.

> Lots of us don’t want to pay a dime because it’s like negotiating with terrorists.

For a concrete example of the implacable amorality of advertising, consider how cable-TV once offered the promise of subscribing to end the ads, but still ended up showing you ads and demanding a subscription fee anyway. Then the same pattern happened again with online streaming services and Youtube: Every would-be savior keeps getting corrupted by the same darkness.

Or consider the commuter that is obliged to pay hundreds a week for gas, and is assaulted by ads at obnoxious volumes while they fill up. Or the jet passenger that endures ads on what should be the PA that is reserved for emergency communications, after they’ve been gouged on ticket prices, because hey, why not monetize a captive audience for all they are worth? Does a first class ticket buy the right to avoid harassment? Everything points to “not for long”..