I talk about it here, but I first stumbled across it on Mastodon. I think it’s more that the type of users Mastodon and HN attracts are the same type of people to pay for a search engine and be excited about a search engine.

I have long hated that “free with ads” is the first and only business model anyone thinks can work on the internet, so I want to support companies that are willing to push back against that. Ads in search create a conflict of interest that I don’t like. Ads in most products create a conflict of interest I don’t like.

I pay for YouTube Premium for a similar ideological reason. I want to support the business model that doesn’t rely on showing me ads. In a perfect world, this would mean that the features and algorithms of YouTube would change to prioritize me as a user, rather than pushing constant consumption, but with Google its baby steps.