I've always been a hacker, tweaker etc. But I can't imagine how anything would work without advertising. And it's not something I find annoying or have trouble filtering out. It's like if you're walking down a street, and you see all the shop signs... If you're not interested, just keep walking.
- Patronage. It's how the arts survived for the first 2-3000 years of civilization.
- Mechanical royalties / automated syndication. It's how musical performances are licensed currently.
- Live performance. Asses in seats.
- Mixed-model revenues. The Economist splits its revenue share roughly into thirds of subscriptions, ads, and bespoke services (the Economist Intelligence Unit).
- Memberships. Public broadcasting, Consumer Reports, and similar systems rely on contributions and pledges.
- Mandatory licensing -- the BBC television tax model. I'm not arguing that it's a free market system, however it's demonstrably worked and fairly well for nearly 85 years.
There are a lot of models. Mass-market advertising applied well to mass-media broadcasting. It's been heavily pursued online, though advertising rates (low), click-through metrics (phenomenally low), technical means of avoidance (readily available if not widely applied), audience dispersal (high) all suggest it's not exactly a resounding success.
I'm not so convinced HN is as anti-corporate as you claim, though I'd color myself that way. It's that there's a very high level of technical expertise -- far more than is necessary to be aware of and successfully deploy ad blocking. Without both factors, you'll find low utilization of same, even with a high anti-corporate bent -- which isn't all that rare, really.
I'll stand by my first point: the general public is fearful and highly ignorant of the technology they use in general. Show me some stats to the contrary and I might find this conversation more interesting.
And for that I offer in place of unsolicited advertising:
- Classifieds
- Directories
- Brochures
- Information centres
- Expos
- Local bulletins
- Store signage
- Word-of-mouth
- Sponsored events
- Trade publications
Of course these may well not have the bang-for-buck of unsolicited ads, but I dream that one day the visual pollution of third-party advertising will not be as accepted.
HN is not "heavily anti-corporation".
Plenty of HN users own their own corporations and defend/praise them constantly. The majority of HN users be against working for most big corporations, because so many HN users are involved in the startup scene, which is dominated by small corporations. But that doesn't mean they're against big corporations per se, and I'm sure plenty HN users are dreaming of being bought out by big corporations, or even working for the likes of Microsoft or Google, which are not exactly small. Most HN users are willing, eager participants in the corporate economy. Many are even libertarians, who staunchly defend capitalism every chance they get.
Also, I don't think HN is "anti-advertising", just against viewing ads on their own machines. I would bet if I ran another poll asking how many HN users are against advertising as such, only a small minority would come forward.
Finally, I've seen no indication that HN is "anti-mainstream". HN is not a meeting place for some kind of underground subculture. With a few exceptions, the people here seem to be relatively mainstream, conforming, well off individuals.
Many, many, many moons ago I ran across a page which reported on user display resolution setting as reported via javascript. At a time when low-end equipment generally supported at least 800x600 and likely 1024x768 display, over 50% of users showed 480x640. Which was the Windows default at the time.
Changing your display resolution takes 2-3 clicks: right click on Desktop, display settings, resolution. And "OK". And this was too much for people.
The lesson was: people don't change defaults. So, oh you devs: choose really sane defaults.
As for me? I've hacked my environment a lot over the several decades I've been using it, and I hack it a little bit more every day. Why? Because I become more productive in it, and it becomes more useful to me.