Here's a thought...
The
Ad-revenue-driven Internet is (yet another example of a) Tragedy of the Commons.
The ad-funded website derives some (small, perhaps, but
measurable) benefit from placing ads, drives clicks through them with
least-cost clickbait, makes some money. The Commons of the Internet, "We, the Readers" carry the cost. Not only the cost of our attention,
the time of our lives, but literally the cost of delivery; we pay for
the bandwidth and infrastructure needed to get those ads in front of
us. So the benefactors of this scheme, the ad-funded websites, the
Facebooks and Googles and Twitters and Instagrams, are simply more
examples of Exploiters of The Commons, driven to maximise the exploitation in
ever-increasing ways (because "if we don't catch those fish,
someone else will, so we'd best get there first and fish them the
hardest.")
BUT. We all know what happens in
every other Race To Eat The Commons... Sooner or later the Commons
collapses. The fish get fished out; the grassy pasture becomes the
Sahara, the air becomes unbreathable.
It's not the ad-blockers those sites
have to fear. Ad-blockers are clearly just a form of immune response,
just like the [fish] that keep getting smaller and smaller. They should bless and welcome the rise of the ad-blockers, because the nett effect of those is merely to prolong the life of the Commons.
No, what
the ad-revenue sites ought to fear is the ultimate and inevitable
Collapse of the Commons. It is hard to see what form that is likely
to take, as is the timing. All we can confidently predict is that the
end of the ad-driven Internet model is a certainty.
It can't come soon enough.
