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Comment by Xenoamorphous | Hacker News Reader

> Just don't think that I am going to turn off the adblocker for you as a consequence. Much more likely, I'm just going to go somewhere else for my kick.

You’ll be saving them money (less infrastructure costs, like bandwith) without giving a penny to their competitors (because you’re using an adblocker); actually now you’re probably a net loss for their competitors.

So they’re happy to lose you, I guess?

We’re headed towards a paywalled Internet, I know first hand. And I hate it.

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There is so much good content on the internet that people put out because they just love it and don't expect any money for it. All of that won't change. Lots of the ad-ridden blogs and stuff will go away but I'll echo the sentiment found largely around these comments: good riddance.

and my favorite content creators only post once in a blue moon when the stars align, likely because they don't have a need to post more often. Which is why my most frequent content creators tend to be the consistent ones who try to get something out at least once a week or month.

Thing is, even with this ad-free model, the most motivated ones will be the ones on top. And They will just find other ways to monetize instead of ads, because they are motivated to capitalize on their audience. Donations (charitable or incentivized), merch, content paywalls, self-ads instead of sponsored ones. Same concept. Ads are a big problem, but not THE core issue.

I'm actually very excited to get back to the point where services compete for my money rather than for my attention. Advertising has created an internet that has an enormous amount of content, most of which is just... bad. It's hard to find good content because almost all of it is engineered to get clicks.

A paywalled internet will mean I'll have to be choosier about what I consume, but what's available will hopefully be high quality because it's not competing for my attention when I'm at my weakest at the end of a long day, it's competing for my wallet when I rationally review the budget every month.

> We’re headed towards a paywalled Internet, I know first hand. And I hate it.

I'd be completely fine with that result. It would mean that commercial websites would be segregated off, leaving the rest of the web (the part I get real value from) more discoverable.

> We’re headed towards a paywalled Internet,

If that's the intersection of need/demand, okay so be it.

Like, I have preferences but I understand they might not be others'.

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