alt Hacker NewsThis is a wild take. Most serious media companies would collapse without online ad revenue. Google would be dead, along with all the products that sorta run the world like maps. But even local publications, like your independent city news site, which you presumably think is good, also die instantly.
The ladder is also pulled up behind any kind of independent quality content producers. You cant run a successful channel without dedicated paid subscribers, and you can't build a dedicated subscriber base without years of work and supplementing your income with ads, so basically everything with an online audience also dies.
Did you not read:
> And we know that the world without online ads is perfectly possible and livable, since we all lived through 1996.
We're in an information crisis. Most people don't know what is true or false anymore. Google and Meta didn't make it better and in fact might have contributed to it. I'd say let's go back to 1996.