Thanks for sharing the perspective here. I think a lot of folks on HN have rightly said that a lot of the problems with the modern internet are due to the ad-supported business model. I don't think you were ever going to move away from it voluntarily -- too many people support it, even if they grumble about it.

But maybe (and likely for worse) LLMs will finally kill this model.

I would love for the ad-supported model to die. I hate ads, and I hate having to serve ads. We get some subscription users but nowhere near enough to cover costs.

Unfortunately, what I think will happen - and indeed already is - is that the AI companies themselves will replace much of the WWW. Sites like the one I am talking about will cease to exist. AI companies, once they can no longer scrape (steal) the data will end up licensing the data themselves and replace us as the distributor to end users. Perhaps as a subscription add-on or also with an ad based model.

Which to some may be fine. Personally, I don't want a few centralized AI companies replacing the hundreds of thousands of independent websites online. Way too much centralized power there.