Who is saying they expect free content?

I'd pay a monthly fee for unmolested search results. I pay for Youtube Premium. I only watch ad-free content that I pay for.

I don't want the content for free - the free stuff is usually worse in quality anyway. I just want to be left alone by advertisers. I don't need what they are selling and the reduce my ability to think. The sheer amount of noise they add to the world makes them a problem.

> Who is saying they expect free content?

Anyone using an adblocker is expecting free content.

Do I also must feel obliged to read every ad page on a magazine? Can't change to another tv channel during the half time? Was I stealing when in the nineties I recorded movies on VHS skipping commercials?

I would say no, and I think websites are not different from media I listed above. If they make or don't make enough money it's not my business. I am free to consume their freely distributed products as I like.

I would totally run an ad blocker that showed me static text or image-based ads. No JavaScript, no animations or video, and I'll happily view ads.

I disagree. I use an adblocker because I refuse to be monetized via freemium tactics. I pay to support some sites that are of interest to me, on most other sites I'm never even given the option.

Advertisements directly lower the quality of any content I'm consuming and I am expecting high quality content.

I both pay for my ISP to connect to the web. I also pay to host web sites that I own which are low cost to me. I also want people to see them and don't run any sort of advertising or data collection on them. It's worth it to me to have my work and information available on the web for other people to use, and even has resulted in me profiting indirectly from it.

If someone wants to turn a profit on their site, that's fine. Do I need to accept whatever they want to serve me when I visit their page? No. Do I need to buy a product from their store if it's not something I'm interested in, even though the payment may go to helping their hosting costs? No.

Remember when the internet was just a bunch of weirdos dialing in and communicating with each other / creating documents about subjects of mutual interest? Who should have been getting paid back then?

I feel like there are some IRC channels that owe me some dividends.

The funny thing is that the content published for free by the weirdos from the past was 100x better that the ad-driven SEO crap we have today.

Also, a lot of that content still exists but it is hidden behind the SEO garbage.

This is just not true and is particularly obtuse. I am not expecting free content using an adblocker, there is often just no way to avoid ads with some products.

I pay for plenty of subscription streaming services “ad free tier”. I buy in app purchases to remove ads. Back when I use to buy Windows PCs, I either bought from the MS store or business laptops to avoid adware.

If I were to ever buy an Android phone (I wouldn’t because Google). It would be a Google device.

I also pay more for an AppleTV than a Roku because half of the Roku screen and the hard coded buttons on the remote are ads.

> No one likes ads, but expecting free content is silly.

It's not always possible to buy out of advertising. One of my fave sites anandtech.com has (I guess relatively reasonable) ads, and I can't subscribe or whatever to get rid of them.

I'm also generally OK with Adwords v1.0 ads, which had virtually no chance of autoplaying a super loud video, running malware on my machine, breaking the layout of a page as I'm trying to click on something, or masquerading as genuine content.

Ad blockers respond to the fact that users have very little ability to control their ad experiences, even in ways we probably think are appropriate like buying out of them. What you're implying here (ads vs. free content) is a false dichotomy.

it also doesn't matter whether a business offers subscriptions, because ads can (and will) always inevitably be layered on top as an additional revenue source. see newspapers, radio, tv, and even real estate for prior art in this regard, and cars, appliances, and other internet-connected goods as ongoing evolutions.

ads vs. free content is indeed a very false dichotomy.

> That's between you and HN and has nothing to do with my consumption of your comment.

Oh the irony! Likewise, the agreement between the content company and the ad company has nothing to do with my consumption of the content. The content company agrees to show ads for the ad company. The ad company agrees to make ads for the content company to show and pay them to show the ads. I make no agreement with either. I download the content and choose not to download the ad. It’s my bandwidth.

Why, life is full of free content. I sit on a park bench and talk to a friend we are providing free content to each other; when my son plays with our kids in the playground it is free content. When 22 strangers pay ball in the park they are providing free content to each other. Life is full of examples of people providing free contents to people around them, so why the internet should be the exception? This frame of mind that everything needs to be a transaction is rotten.

I don't mind ads on broadcast TV or radio because they fund the content and don't insist on tracking me.

The privacy invasion that accompanies web ads leads me to treat them as malware and prevent their execution on my devices. I don't care about non-personalized ads (e.g. the 1P-hosted display ads on Ravelry).

I don’t expect free content, I expect that if your business can’t survive without ads it should disappear from the face of the earth.

Going without is better than ad funded. The goal of me running ad blockers is not just to make my life nicer but to make ad funded shit (i.e. most of the current internet) unviable.

Paywall away! If it’s good enough for the money, I’ll always pay for it.