I'm building a company that plans to charge people to read things. The reading experience, without ads, is superior. It's worth paying for. That means that an ad free future is possible.
"And just how are we to know for _sure_ that this trumped up restaurant is truly superior?"
In other words, this is how capitalism works. Businesses and vendors make value propositions, then people take chances on them. It works for every single other class of good, but for some reason the big brains that run the internet can't wrap their head around how it would work for them.
Some people have understood this, and they're making a killing from it. For instance, which do you watch more of, HBO, Hulu, Prime and Netflix or broadcast TV? Tons and tons of people are happy to shell out cash for products they consider worth it.
Newspapers and magazines have tried to convince us that these asshole millenials refuse to pay for things anymore, but what they mean is they refuse to pay for shitty things. They're actually perfectly happy to OVERpay for things they like. It just turns out newspapers and magazines aren't, you know, worth that much.
Given the current state of the web and the struggle that many media companies are having, I don't think we can take this for granted today.
Fingers crossed that you and experiences like Mozilla's proposed can change this.
This isn’t a pro-ads argument, but an appeal to sober, informed debate.
But I think suggesting an ad-free future is a leap, not least because paid content platforms need to do marketing. Why do you have a Netflix subscription? Because you heard they had some good shows? how do you know what shows they have before you subscribe?