Sure. Which means we'll end up with some sort of system where that's not necessary. Remember, the marginal cost of production for a web site visit is zero.

It's also important to remember that the vast majority of journalists and would-be journalists currently can't afford to do journalism. We need to solve both the consumer and producer problems.

90% of everything is crap, and websites are a thing so 90% of them are crap. So its ok if they die.

Then again, neither wikipedia nor <s>youtubr</s>hacker news have ads and that's like half of what i read on the internet right there.

Edit: this is what happens when i try to post while falling asleep. Meant to say hn not youtube. Youtube definitely has ads

HN has ads: they're the job posts that appear on the front page without voting buttons

But not 3rd party tracking ads. HN's "ads" don't get blocked by uBlock either.

> Then again, neither wikipedia nor youtubr have ads and that's like half of what i read on the internet right there.

Don't know which YouTube you use, but the one I do does have ads.

uBlock Origin seems to block all advertising on Youtube for me, including pre-roll and intermission ads in the videos. The only advertising I see on youtube these days is the sponsored sections inserted by the video creators.

I don't really watch that much youtube but now that my son watches some cartoons on it I've subscribed to premium so he doesn't see any ads. I think it's ok to pay for youtube as it arguably provides a useful service. I also know that I'm in a privileged position to be able to pay for youtube premium, so my comment is not about whether ads are inherently bad or not, just that you can watch youtube without ads if you pay for it.

I also don't ever have to deal with ads - perhaps because I also have a (seldom used or visited) channel?

Websites existed before online ads were a thing.

yes, but the current penetration didn't.

if you think the future is asking people from Rwanda to pay 5 bucks a month to read a single online newspaper, or get access to Reddit then I guess you're in for a rude awakening.

1) How will it cost to read the newspaper 5$ in Rwanda? That's the price of a monthly subscription in Germany.

2) If said people can't afford 5$/month how will they afford the stuff ads are targeting them to buy?

This is what concerns me most about ad blocking.

"In a world without ads, people will just pay their own way" is elitist thinking. Most people online have nothing of value to exchange except their attention.