A healthy internet is ultimately up to us to build and maintain.
I feel like that's not a real problem. Or, maybe only a problem for services that care more about having a ton of users than being profitable and sustainable.
There are quite a few services (SmugMug, Vimeo, NetFlix, etc.) that charge money, don't have advertisements, and are doing just fine.
It's weird that so many web companies decide to go the sleazy advertisement/tracking/malware route rather than just charge money for the services they provide.
You will find very quickly how reluctant people are to pay for anything despite a few cultural-phenomenon-level exceptions like Netflix.
I'm amazed how many people, like my own coworkers making $100k+, listen to Spotify all day every day yet will endure advertisement after advertisement in their stream of music instead of paying $10/month. If someone isn't even going to pay for Spotify despite it being a central part of their day to day experience, GG to your little service.
I think advertising has played a major hand in shepherding us into this position that divorced us from the idea of paying for content we enjoy. There is going to have to be a major cultural change to bring us back into a healthy relationship with content.
One common response to this is "well, maybe everyone should be hobbyists again making content for free," but surely we can find a better middleground than structuring things such that we depend on people toiling away in their freetime to produce the content we happen to want. For example, I'd rather my favorite content providers be able to feed themselves working on this content. We both benefit: I get to enjoy more content. Depending on hobby work doesn't get us there.
That's absolutely not true, though. People buy stuff all the time. Clothing, shoes, sporting goods, dishes, food, housewares, books, DVDs, etc.
The "freemium" approach Spotify takes is a poor example because they're not charging for their real service of music streaming, but instead to get rid of advertisements. They've moved their own goalposts, and the question isn't "Is streaming music worth $10 a month?" but "Is it worth $10 a month to get rid of this commercial?" If the options were "Pay $10 to stream music" or "Listen to nothing," the results might be a lot different.
> One common response to this is "well, maybe everyone should be hobbyists again making content for free," but surely we can find a better middleground than structuring things such that we depend on people toiling away in their freetime to produce the content we happen to want. For example, I'd rather my favorite content providers be able to feed themselves working on this content. We both benefit: I get to enjoy more content. Depending on hobby work doesn't get us there.
I'm not making that argument, and you're setting up a false dichotomy. There's no reason content creators need to use advertisements and can't charge for their content instead. It worked fine for music and movies for over a hundred years, and books have been using that model for hundreds of years before that.
I'd never pay $10 for a character in a game, but I'd happily pay $15 for a plastic toy that coincidentally unlocks something in a game I was enjoying anyway
There are people who pay for paid password managers when free alternative products available. I myself pay for a number of services (very reasonably priced) when I could have used free alternatives. The difference is the guys I pay don't offer a free edition without ads and nonsense like that. They just build a great software and ask to pay for their effort.
Why go to work, earn cash with your attention, and pay for Spotify when you can directly monetize your attention on-demand in real-time at the rate you consume? That's what advertising allows.
If you do it as a hobby, it's not toiling. It becomes toiling when you do it as work, especially if you have to please advertisers instead of making the content you love.
Also lots of people can't afford all the content they consume today, and would much rather have access with ads than nothing all.
I mean, on the whole, the vast majority of ad supported content is in fact clickbait trash.