I'm grown up now, I understand how things work, and I'd rather see Tide and Coke ads than pay $20/mo to 8 different orgs, while maintaining that ad free option for those who want it.
The children of the internet probably won't sign a truce, so let's just cut them out and let intellectually honest people have a decent internet.
I dunno. That seems like a pretty big fuck you to a paying customer already when all they have to do is provide a sub for a few more bucks a month. But I guess I'm a child of the Internet.
If you have an argument against adding a ad-free sku for news outlets I'd love to hear it.
How much faster would consumer software be if adware was made illegal? How much faster would our devices be if we didn't have half the code base supporting malware?
Acting like an ad enabled internet was the only option is extremely foolish, especially when the ad enabled internet was fully chosen and pushed onto the public by very specific people (thanks Newt Gingrich!).
That era vastly predates the Internet, let alone the (relatively) ad-free pre-1980s Internet, neither of which we can return to in any meaningful fashion.
Nope, two problems
1- Ads is privacy issue not only convenience issue. Targeted ads should not normalized.
2- Companies figures out that even paying doesn't means you don't get ads. You probably are bigger target with more disposable income than average in such case.
Ah, so, take the money out of it completely? No subscriptions, and no ads? Sounds like a good idea to me.