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This feels such a breath of fresh air, especially being the top comment and coming from a 2009 account.

>This feels like a situation where an organization tries doing something laudable, but still gets criticized for it.

Ads is evil has been a thing on HN for a very very long time.

Ads is evil has been a human thing for many times longer. Everybody hates them. At best, some accept ads as a necessary evil. It’s a dire combination: tremendously irritating and adding absolutely zero value to the world.

It’s because I’m a nerd with a background in journalism, and have been around the realities of a lot of this stuff for a while.

Well at least HN is at the point where you could write it out and not get any personal attack. So things are improving. In 2016 - 2020 it wouldn't even be upvoted in the first place.

I also dont think you need to be in journalism to understand the business case around it. People just need to understand business, or i.e the realities. But despite the swing back to somewhat moderate discussions, HN's pro business stance have been on the decline from the start and shows no kind of recovering.

So please continue to chime in when you can. It certainly help to balance the dynamics of discussion.

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