We could also pay for all the sites we use (google, youtube, gmail, reddit, etc.), but it would be pretty pricey if you visit a lot of sites. Most people would choose tracking instead.
A lot of the inventory I buy is now on intent-based sites, and the passive profiles used for cross-site banner display for example, for us, tend to drive the lowest quality conversions.
Advertising can still have a place, but it requires effort to do well (like buying a sponsored post on a subreddit right now). Higher effort though I'd wager will lead to better conversions for all in the long run.
It has since morphed into something else entirely.
The scummy company whose entire business is based on violating people’s privacy asks me to create an account and give out real personal information like name and address? Fuck that.
Same thing with paid newspapers, you’re trading off a pseudonymous ID gathered via cookies/browser fingerprinting against which you can defend with ad-blockers to your actual identity you give them when signing up and then logging in every single time. And Google and Facebook just leech off that since their trackers are also loaded on every page.
If you strip all this and just make an old-fashioned public service business, maybe operated by a lean, tech-led non-profit (looking at you Mozilla...) you are suddenly ending up with a pretty cheap (e.g. cents instead of $) service (at least compared to what classic media costs). Maybe you also have to cut corners on things like free xK-Upload, but I think most people (ie consumers) could live with some surcharge there.
At least he's honest about it. If $10 sounds like a lot, you aren't sufficiently scared of ad-tech yet.
So I don't know why Jimmy Wales needs to charge 10$ for his network if he's only interested in sustainable operation. If it's the early adopter package for development expenses, I'm all in, but I don't know how he shouldn't eventually get away with 1 Mio. users paying 10$/per year if he doesn't intend to market it as a a startup/make money in successful startup scales.
There could be a free casual web, for people who just want to check things out or get a general overview, and offers for those with a deeper interest, who maybe spend a lot of time there and have very different demands. What doesn't work is gating casual information.
Product-first companies seem to be doing fine – Spotify doesn't exactly have a problem with people not wanting to pay for it.