I'd rather honestly pay for great content that is worth reading. I think that ads misalign incentives, and force journalists and writers to focus on writing clickbaity articles to drive as much traffic as possible. If more people would agree to pay for content - we would see less bullshit ads and less articles needlessly separated into 10 stupid parts.
It would provide a legitemate business model for new writers and allow them to focus on creating high quality content instead of being forced to dumb it down to the mainstream level to get the views.
Also, if websites like facebook could suggest an alternative payed model without being hated for it by everybody, they could focus on user experience and building quality products, instead of tricking people into watching as much ads as possible and selling their data.
Right now writers and artists can only:
- Rely on ads for their income
- Beg for money on patreon
- Have to sell some t-shirts and dumb merch
to support themselves. The only honest and bullshit-less way to make money is selling books, but it's not always applicable.
I believe that if you think that the content is worth reading - it is worth paying for. Do an honest business transaction, and pay money for the value that you receive, instead of forcing people to come up with shady and manipulative ways to extract money from your attention.
If more people would agree to pay for content, internet would be a much better and more awesome place.