> There are a lot of passionate people willing to put content up online just for the feeling of helping others and getting their work recognized
I had the same thought. Ads enable people who previously put up their content out of passion to do the same thing to commercial gain. Is this good or bad? On the plus side, it incentivizes the creation of more quality content. On the other hand, "labor of love" content is homier, less corporatized, and the extent to which they will help you on a given problem is not biased by their ability to earn money from said problem.
It's a similar situation between mom and pop restaurants and chains. Now it's hard to say that one or the other is definitively better -- depends on what you're looking for. I wish there were resources out there to help understand the nature of this tradeoff and how it has played out in different areas of the economy.
I had the same thought. Ads enable people who previously put up their content out of passion to do the same thing to commercial gain. Is this good or bad? On the plus side, it incentivizes the creation of more quality content. On the other hand, "labor of love" content is homier, less corporatized, and the extent to which they will help you on a given problem is not biased by their ability to earn money from said problem.
It's a similar situation between mom and pop restaurants and chains. Now it's hard to say that one or the other is definitively better -- depends on what you're looking for. I wish there were resources out there to help understand the nature of this tradeoff and how it has played out in different areas of the economy.