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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

It's also easy for me to ignore ads on the web. I am always baffled by those commenters on HN who claim they would rather pay for content rather than seeing ads or those that seem to have a deep aversion for ads. For me, ads are so easy to ignore that those point of views are hard to understand.

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That’s not the only thing that paying for content gives you, though. Paying for content gives you a right to the content, it gives you a power over the content, just like paying taxes gives you a vote and power over the country’s governance. If you don’t pay for it, then you can’t really expect the website to be working for you.

It's not the ads that bother me [if they're not moving/sounding or actively drawing my attention]. It's the implicit cross site tracking.

If someone hosts their own ad content, I'm far more likely to click it if it's relevant (and won't block it, which is my default for anything cross-site).

I am happy to pay for content because people need to make a living. I don't block ads but I would be glad if I could pay to turn ads off.

I'm also happy to pay a site for content, but I have to point out that we all pay for both the ads and content.

When you pay directly you cut out a layer of middlemen (the ad company / broker) so I see subscription-based sites as more efficient than ad-supported ones.

And then there are those pages (eg [1]) where I am unable to see anything at all at first glance because of these instincts. :)

[1] http://www.mediamarkt.de/ (sells electronics)

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