I’m not saying don’t do it. I think you’re doing great. HN is clearly a hugely successful content marketing project regardless of how the origin story is ret-conned.

You’ve got a passionate community of rich/technically skilled people who claim to hate ads falling over themselves to explain why this site is somehow different.

Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s more the cognitive dissonance of the commenters here who proudly announce, “I never see any ads” and “ads have no effect on me” that I find funny.