"I will do everything that's in my power"
Will you pay money for the content you consume?
Will you pay money for the content you consume?
You can’t outrun the incentive alignment. Nobody can. Case in point - Apple is shifting hard into the ad space after laying low and crafting a premium brand.
The money is just too good.
There's Nebula for some creators and Patreon for others, but not everyone has an ad free way to watch them. Also Patreon can really begin to add up.
And yeah there's that extension that can skip sponsored segments but that's blocking ads, not paying to avoid them.
You can't skip the sponsored segment if literally 100% of the video has HelloFresh boxes in the background, or if an important part of the video happens while the creator coincidentally eats a bowl of Keto cereal.
Or what about those LinusTechTip videos where Intel gives them $5k to build a dream system for an employee (Intel based, of course). I find those entertaining but they're really just 20 minute long Intel advertisements.
Videos don't have nipples around, or else they would get flagged, right? Do the same for unmarked ads. This is of course a handwavy way to propose a solution... the idea is that something could be done to improve the ad-free experience of viewers who pay. Otherwise, they'd better remain using the latest published version of Vanced, which even integrated SponsorBlock (again, pirates offering a better user experience!)
If anything, I've seen more and more services where paying is just for "premium features," of which getting away from ads isn't one of them. Spotify is a key example - if you pay for premium you don't get ads interrupting music, but you still see their bundled advertisements on the home screen of the app, you get content suggested to you in a way that is very advertiser-centric, etc.
I think we should maybe split off the discussion of "how will these businesses get paid the way ads get paid" from "ads are bad and we should get rid of them." Frankly, I don't care if advertising as a business tanks and that takes other businesses with it. The externalities of surveillance capitalism are pretty shitty, and I'm fairly confident there are other ways for people to be productive within the economy that don't involve the invasive nature of today's advertising ecosystem.
I use open source stuff when I can, and similarly, I contribute to the projects when I can. This seems to be the only legitimate way to avoid ads.