If you kill off free and ad supported services[0], you take away the ability of a large fraction of the world's population to use the internet. People using 3-4 USD/month prepaid internet packs to communicate using Facebook and Whatsapp, and these days, even finding jobs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20556346)

HN's default position of "burn the ads with fire", therefore, has always struck me as a very privileged position that fails to take into account users from all around the world. And guess what? If the kind of people who usually post here succeed in forcing through that opinion, that is what most of the world will have to deal with too, since Silicon Valley drives so much of tech.

[0] Although, it is unlikely that advertisers are really targeting the kind of users I'm talking about, so in effect these users are being subsidized by others.