I don't think we have a right to a business model. Either you figure one out for your particular site (selling access to the website, donations, etc) or you don't and stop and either is ok.
That seems like an arbitrary penalty. What harm is being prevented by banning advertising, in general?
That directly leads to all these addictive dark patterns.
The harms of addictive design in internet social media.
Regardless, my point was just to answer the question, "is it okay as a business model?" Ostensibly, if advertising online were banned, a business model centered around selling online advertisement attention would not be ok.
Its been 30 years and no one has been able to continue that "etc".
The same government who threatened to take ABC broadcast license because Kimmel made a joke about a dead podcaster
And then there is that entire “free press” thing in the constitution.
And Disney quickly recanted as soon as people started canceling, even the conservative owned local affiliates had to back down.
The potential failure of the system because of the effect of the wrong choice in this matter is evidence in favor of my argument, not against it.
They also can’t stop me because I don’t “look like I belong” in my neighborhood (true story). I’d rather not give the government any more power.
Have you every thought about the fact that power doesn't just disappear? Someone is going to have control over the jackbooted thugs. Claiming democratic norms and public control over them is bad just ensures that they become the tools of a few people without any way to constrain them.
I'm sorry you had a bad experience and that we are currently having one as a country, but the solution is to push for more democracy, not more privatization.
And to pretend like the US is a democracy where the popular vote matters completely ignores reality. Every state gets two Senators so South Dakota has the same voting power in the Senate as California. The house districts are so gerrymandered that the sum total of Democratic votes will always be less than their share of the house since it is so easy to dilute Democrats voting power since they live in major cities.
So if you want to push for a more (small d) democratic government, you’re going to first have to overall the entire constitution so the largest states population’s aren’t diluted.
And I posted a link earlier that the government has literally been trying to defund PBS since the 1960a and Mr. Rogers himself had to beg Congress not to defund it.
Right now today the federal government is erasing any signs of anything in museums and national parks that doesn’t make the US look good or admit that gay people exist. This is the government you want controlling the press?
The constitution doesn't say anything about whether the government can fund media.
> And to pretend like the US is a democracy where the popular vote matters completely ignores reality.
No one made that claim. In fact, no one claimed that popular vote was even a good standard for a democracy. Is your assertion that the solution to an imperfect system is not to try and reform it, but to rely on a worse one?
> So if you want to push for a more (small d) democratic government, you’re going to first have to overall the entire constitution so the largest states population’s aren’t diluted.
I don't know if that's the answer to the nation's problems, but it is worthy of consideration.
> And I posted a link earlier that the government has literally been trying to defund PBS since the 1960a and Mr. Rogers himself had to beg Congress not to defund it.
The government is not a unified monolith. The whole point of democracy is that everything is being debated all the time and sometimes people don't agree and try to stop or changes things that others did. That's a good thing.
> Right now today the federal government is erasing any signs of anything in museums and national parks that doesn’t make the US look good or admit that gay people exist. This is the government you want controlling the press?
I think that's bad, and hopefully enough other people do so that we can vote out the people who are doing that and restore things to how they were.
How can the press be free of government power and funded by the government?
> your assertion that the solution to an imperfect system is not to try and reform it, but to rely on a worse one?
So as both a student of the history of the Civil Rights movement, whose still living parents grew up in the Jim Crow South and who himself has been harassed by the police for thinking he doesn’t belong in his own neighborhood where he made twice the household income alone as the median household income in the county (which itself was the most wealthy county in the state), you’ll have to excuse me for not trusting the government.
I have never once been harassed by a private company and I’ve never had a problem getting a job in 30 years across 10 jobs because of discrimination - everything from startups to the second largest employer in the US (working remotely for that one was why I did make twice the income of the richest county in GA).
> No one made that claim. In fact, no one claimed that popular vote was even a good standard for a democracy. Is your assertion that the solution to an imperfect system is not to try and reform it, but to rely on a worse one?
Well for me, the worse thing that can happen is give a government where the states who are predominantly made up and vote for people who are hostile toward people who look like me have outsized power. Who is going to speak truth to power if the power funds the press?
> The government is not a unified monolith. The whole point of democracy is that everything is being debated all the time and sometimes people don't agree and try to stop or changes things that others did. That's a good thing.
Have you not been paying attention for the last two years?
> I think that's bad, and hopefully enough other people do so that we can vote out the people who are doing that and restore things to how they were.
You know that whole thing about what people think don’t matter between 2 senators per state and gerrymandering and to a lesser extent the electoral college? This country knew exactly what they were getting when they voted in 2024 and 40% of the people still support it.
And there are many places in the middle between 'government always bad' and 'private always bad'. Extreme positions never get you a good version of the thing you want.
The structural problem is the government. The structure of the government as stated in the Constitution is that the rural Bible thumping, racist part of America structurally has more power because of 2 Senators per state and to a lesser extent the electoral college. Until that’s not the case, the government will always be statistically more likely to be antagonistic to people who look like me.
I’ve worked for 30 years and the last decade+ in roles that put me in the rooms of decision makers. First as a tech lead at product companies and then as a customer facing consultant.
I never wondered whether I was going to be treated differently by corporate America - and I never have either as interviewee or dealing with CxO, directors, etc. The tools of the government on the other hand …
The public servants - the people with the legal right to take my property, liberty and life - those are the problem. You see what the full force of a corrupt government can do to its enemies with the meritless prosecution of Trump’s enemies and that almost half of the people still support. The trigger happy cop that can pull me over because I suspiciously look like I’m going to my own house worries me much more than Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post. The alternative would be the government owning and controlling the press? This government. Even today if I want to learn about anything related to my health, I trust the Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos more than I trust the DHS run by RFK jr? You think that if the government funded newspapers you would get the truth about vaccines? The masked jack booted thugs in MN?
You realize slavery was built into the constitution right? That whole 3/5ths of a person thing. Also the same government endorsed “separate but equal” in a Supreme Court case that had my again still living parents growing up in less well funded schools and drinking from separates water fountains.
I mentioned that until a couple of years ago, I lived in what was the most affluent county in the state. That county was Forsyth County GA and just so you don’t think I’m making this up just to argue.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954232
While the outskirts of this county have diversified as far as not being rural. It’s still mostly White and conservative (my step son was one of only four Black students in his entire public high school). More of the Bush/Romney type of classic conservative than populist. What I didn’t mention was this was Forsyth County only 25-35 years ago.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dlzwh2Wh1fw
It was a “sundown town”.
Those people haven’t gone anywhere - we had White friends that lived in the older parts of Forsyth County and even they told us to make sure we call if we get lost coming to their house and don’t walk up to the wrong house by mistake.
FWIW: we didn’t move because we had any problems living there. We sold the house for twice what we had it built for eight years earlier and downsized after my younger (step)son graduated and moved to state tax free, warmer Florida once I pivoted into consulting where it’s relatively easy to find companies that allow remote work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers%27s_1969_United_St...
And Trump just cut funding for both PBS and NPR
We can argue about public media but Germany is a really bad example.
Nahh that would never happen.
Also, what would stop the autocrat from outlawing any non-government news source?? A piece of paper written by people 250 years ago certainly won't.
Any government funded press would either be a tool of propaganda or be constantly worried about getting defunded - like what just happened to NPR and PBS.
The government just required the press to get pre approval before they could publish anything - even non classified info.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-news/2025/09/pentagon...
This idea was so abhorrent that not even Fox News would sign on.
https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-reporting-rules-hegseth-...
Now the part of the press corps that has direct access to talk to Pentagon officials is literally made up of right wing social media influencers.
But I also agree it's when <1% of people where online, and it's never going back to that.
Clearly any scheme will not be perfect but these sort of objections either seem to misunderstand the core issue, or to be willfully confusing by raising irrelevant details.
In practice, this cuts of 80% of the worlds population.
Catering to the lowest common denominator is how we got the Burger King guy on spirit airlines.
I have and do pay for website access. That doesn't mean much if the current model flocks to no paid services.
My comment about not having a right to business models is in some ways more general. Regardless of whether this business model is protected for some other reason, business models in general aren't, and it's a common flawed argument that they are.
Note, neither one of us is a corporation, so "we" doesn't refer to corporations.