The funny thing is that there are scores of people here who are actively trying to get the Guardian out of business, because they regard anything related to advertising as evil. Will we be more or less free without the Guardian and similar independent sources of information?
Yes, but advertising plays a big role on paid newspapers too. They would be just too expensive without ads. Moreover, before the free newspapers on the internet, the only mainstream free way to get news was from TV, which is much more superficial and easier to control by governments. I think we are much more free and more informed thanks to ad-supported online news sources. That's why I find all this hate for that business model wrong.
Final remark: A website like Hacker News would not be possible if all the content was behind a paywall. Would that really be a better internet?
Plenty of the information sources linked to are free of advertising and not behind paywalls. In fact, those are probably the better information sources.
That's how the web started, remember: no ads. Just free sources of information.
I am find with ads, I am not fine with tracking and data mining on cost of my privacy.
The internet is built on free stuff. It got big on free content. HN is free content. Look at all those comments that people leave for free. The belief that things must cost money is a fallacy!
