> If something is not sustainable without ads that seems to imply that people are not willing to pay for it. If people aren't willing to pay for it then I'm not sure it is a good business model.
This only holds if you agree that humans are perfectly rational economic agents. I disagree with that and think that there are lots of little interactions where just introducing a financial transaction impacts how people interact.
Maybe If I tallied all of my internet usage, figured out how much I value my internet usage, and then gave each page visit a value I could find out that I value my hackernews usage at $0.02 per link click. But if clicking links directly led to me paying more, my usage pattern would change.
This only holds if you agree that humans are perfectly rational economic agents. I disagree with that and think that there are lots of little interactions where just introducing a financial transaction impacts how people interact.
Maybe If I tallied all of my internet usage, figured out how much I value my internet usage, and then gave each page visit a value I could find out that I value my hackernews usage at $0.02 per link click. But if clicking links directly led to me paying more, my usage pattern would change.