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I agree that they’re evil and there are legitimate reasons to use ad blockers. But ("But" is such an unwelcomed word here) we need a better business model than ads to support free content creators, if we want to push back against The Advertisers.

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The advertising business model destroyed any possible alternative, like Google Maps destroyed virtually all commercial maps, by providing products "for free" with costs well hidden from the public. Yet those costs exist and burden the society even more by removing the competition and enabling monopolies.

Who knows which products and business models would exist without it? The (actually free, non-monopolized) market would show us. I wish it could and am curious, too.

The real solution is to ban advertising and let the free market do its job, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269

It's called paying for shit. Like we used to before everything went ad driven. You'd go and buy a magazine or a book or a newspaper. (Ironically, you often still got ads though, ugh).

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