> A lot of these objections are a bit odd. What's your reason for preferring ad-supported content?
I don't like ad-supported content and hate tracking with a passion. However, it's reasonable to say that, at least at the moment, advertising is
- easier (and not just technically, but also from the bureaucratic side!) to implement than donations or "real" payments, and note that some countries like Germany make a legal distinction between these when it comes to taxes, and mis-classifying income as donations comes with severe penalties
- guaranteed, predictable income for authors
- zero effort for the reader
- zero direct, financial risks for the reader
The result of this is the current, mostly ad supported crap infrastructure we currently have on the Internet.
Personally, I'd advocate for drastic banking regulation and tax code changes to make paying for online content easier so that regular people can take advantage too, without going through middlemen extracting rent everywhere:
- for clearly non-commercial content which most personal blogs/vlogs/podcasts fall into, completely exempt donations from tax and other bureaucratic (AML, KYC, invoices) requirements
- create a globally usable (!) financial network with no censorship other than what's illegal in the recipient's country, low caps on transfer fees (0.1%), real-time transfers and "deposit only" accounts, so that transferring money across countries actually gets realistic, and I can offer my bank account number without having to fear someone draining my account. SEPA gets pretty close to that, but it's not joined with the US, Australia or Asia so at the moment there is no alternative for cross-continental donations other than to rely on PayPal and friends.
You bring up a lot of real problems and good solutions, but ultimately I don't see an argument for the existence of ads in your post. If anything, advertising is one of the reasons a lot of the problems you mention exist. If it weren't so easy to monetize garbage with ads, there would be greater demand for easier payment solutions.
I'll also add, about this supposed benefit of ads:
> - zero direct, financial risks for the reader
"Direct" is doing a lot of work here. Ads absolutely are a financial risk to readers. "You can just not buy the product" puts a lot more faith in human agency than is warranted. Everyone buys goods and services they don't need, or which are worse than less-advertised alternatives, because of advertising. People are manipulable and that includes you (and me). No one is immune. Even if you never see an ad, your friends pass bad information from ads to you. Even if you aren't easily fooled by lies, advertisers have a great deal of control over what truth gets placed in front of you. You are being manipulated into spending money by ads--it's practically unavoidable in today's society--and if you aren't taking steps to protect yourself, you are being manipulated even more.
Arguably financial harm isn't even the most fundamental harm done by ads--I'd argue that the psychological harm done by ads is actually worse.
I don't like ad-supported content and hate tracking with a passion. However, it's reasonable to say that, at least at the moment, advertising is
- easier (and not just technically, but also from the bureaucratic side!) to implement than donations or "real" payments, and note that some countries like Germany make a legal distinction between these when it comes to taxes, and mis-classifying income as donations comes with severe penalties
- guaranteed, predictable income for authors
- zero effort for the reader
- zero direct, financial risks for the reader
The result of this is the current, mostly ad supported crap infrastructure we currently have on the Internet.
Personally, I'd advocate for drastic banking regulation and tax code changes to make paying for online content easier so that regular people can take advantage too, without going through middlemen extracting rent everywhere:
- for clearly non-commercial content which most personal blogs/vlogs/podcasts fall into, completely exempt donations from tax and other bureaucratic (AML, KYC, invoices) requirements
- create a globally usable (!) financial network with no censorship other than what's illegal in the recipient's country, low caps on transfer fees (0.1%), real-time transfers and "deposit only" accounts, so that transferring money across countries actually gets realistic, and I can offer my bank account number without having to fear someone draining my account. SEPA gets pretty close to that, but it's not joined with the US, Australia or Asia so at the moment there is no alternative for cross-continental donations other than to rely on PayPal and friends.