Yea, I do agree we would see more services become paywalled as a result. Not that that would be a bad thing though, not every site would go that route, the main reason sites don’t already is because they know that the typical user isn’t going to pay money to access their site, they will just go elsewhere.
The way I can see it, the ad supported model would go away, then branch into a few ways:
Sites opt for a paywall on the individual scale; but this won’t work as the everyday user isn’t going to spend $ on every site they visit, so they will just visit sites that don’t force a paywall
Sites opt into selective pay packages/subscriptions kind of like how cable worked, where you pay one provider, and it gets distributed across sites based on how much traffic each site got that was involved. I’m unsure how I feel about this route. If it’s done right I wouldn’t mind but, if it ends up being insane pricing like how cable was I wouldn’t participate.
Sites tone down the amount of ads, as the only thing they are making money on now is user data tracking, which doesn’t need a bunch of different ads on the system and also doesn’t really require user interaction.
The two examples we have aren’t great: video streaming and newspapers.
For video streaming, they try to create as much of a monopoly as possible and then extract value from you–enshittification. And even at this early stage, it’s not the “ad-free” tier it’s “ad-free*” tier.
For newspapers, rich people just buy them and blatantly use it for propaganda; they’re willing to operate at an official loss if it saves them from regulation or taxes.
Honestly, the ad-free* tiers is what is making me want to do away with ads the most. I don’t mind paying for a service, I do mind paying for a service just to get ads anyway. The double dipping is so annoying.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a service provider that isn’t actively forcing ads into premium tiers.
Yea, I do agree we would see more services become paywalled as a result. Not that that would be a bad thing though, not every site would go that route, the main reason sites don’t already is because they know that the typical user isn’t going to pay money to access their site, they will just go elsewhere.
The way I can see it, the ad supported model would go away, then branch into a few ways:
The two examples we have aren’t great: video streaming and newspapers.
For video streaming, they try to create as much of a monopoly as possible and then extract value from you–enshittification. And even at this early stage, it’s not the “ad-free” tier it’s “ad-free*” tier.
For newspapers, rich people just buy them and blatantly use it for propaganda; they’re willing to operate at an official loss if it saves them from regulation or taxes.
Honestly, the ad-free* tiers is what is making me want to do away with ads the most. I don’t mind paying for a service, I do mind paying for a service just to get ads anyway. The double dipping is so annoying.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a service provider that isn’t actively forcing ads into premium tiers.