The amount of tech folks that don’t realize how much their jobs and lifestyles only exist because of the commercialization of the internet and “capitalism”…

It's not an anticapitalist take to say that the internet would have been better without commercialization. There's a world outside of the internet. There's programming jobs outside of the internet. Not everything has to be commercialized. And that doesn't mean commercialization is inherently bad.

I also don't think most internet-adjacent jobs don't even involve toxic, intrusive advertising.

Maybe this is wildly presumptuous but it feels like most of the people complaining about "commercialization" seem to hate the toxic cycle of intrusive ads and algorithm-optimized content that is supported by those ads.

Certainly, that's what the folks quoted in the linked article are railing against.

Do the people railing against "commercialization" of the internet really hate the fact that you can like, order dog food or schedule a trip to the dentist online? Or do they just hate the toxic ad crap?

You're right, it is ironic.

But the fact remains, HN is free to use, the plugs on the front-page are clearly flagged so you don't have to read them, and apart from those the site is ad-free and looks and behaves a lot like the old internet.

I wish there were more websites like it or an easy way to find them. Maybe there's a business case for it, like an index of web pages.

/s

But seriously, are there any good search engines of text only or mostly text websites?

Are people really opposed to the commercialization of the internet, or just intrusive advertising?

People are using the terms interchangeably here but I would draw a fairly sharp line between intrusive online advertising and other aspects of internet commercialization, and I think most people would as well.

I love being able to buy physical goods and online. I think most people love this. I think you could ban ads from the internet tomorrow, and most online retailers would continue to flourish just fine. Though it would be harder for new retailers to break into the game.

I also love various online services. I love being able to schedule a trip to the dentist or access my bank account online. Again I think very few people object to this.

It's really only content delivery and search that are hopelessly entangled with toxic advertising that is necessitated by the fact that people expect those things to be free. I know those are a couple of enormous "onlys." However, to return to your point:

    The irony off posting this on a VC website that make 
    money off the commercialisation of the internet. 

They get a lot of press and mindshare, especially in SV, but the majority of internet-adjacent companies and engineers are not involved in the search, content, or advertising industries.

> They get a lot of press and mindshare, especially in SV, but the majority of internet-adjacent companies and engineers are not involved in the search, content, or advertising industries.

This is a pretty big divergence from GP's comment. Besides, many of them are customers of the same industry buying ads, or vendors selling data. The whole thing reeks of needless fingerpointing. While consumers keep feeding their data and money to these companies. They don't have to. Consumers are trading personal info and preferences for convenience and dopamine.

Who's the worse bad guy here? It seems like everyone is getting what they want one way or the other. I'd argue that making the internet addictive is the real problem here.

Not saying this to justify any of it, it's just the reality I see.

Online shopping sites relies on ads. You can see many ads for shopping

Worse than ads, they also often have referral programs which causes discussion of the sold products elsewhere to be drowned out by listicles that care more about getting you to buy something that they have a referral link for than meaningful comparison.