Why ads are a problem
I honestly believe you&#x27;re either taking this personally and&#x2F;or using emotional arguments from some deep hatred of advertising. Nevertheless I hope this clears it up for you:<p>---<p>Advertising is meant to gain your attention. This is not a secret conspiracy, it is quite literally the entire business. That being said, there is vast differential in the amount of energy expended in ignoring content vs the amount needed to make a willful decision of how to value and purchase said content.<p>Subscriptions are actually even harder to decide on because they are a much higher cost that requires a commitment with a single outlet and trust that their quality will continue to be to your liking vs a single article.<p>Patreon is not an alternative funding model - it is still direct payment&#x2F;funds transfer. It&#x27;s just optional. It&#x27;s also not viable for any scalable business. Not everything can or should be a small little site.<p>Advertising is packaged with content because the publisher owns the right to that content and how it&#x27;s distributed. This is the same in every other medium ever invented. Same with any other product you buy. You get it as it comes. If you&#x27;re not compensating that advertiser for that content directly, then they have every right to include advertising to offset the cost of creating and distributing that content to you which you requested. Would you rather they deny your request?<p>Everything is a security risk. You should stay in a nuclear bunker and off the internet to truly minimize surface area. However that&#x27;s not realistic. Ad networks definitely have an implementation problem with not enough standards on malware testing, and yes they&#x27;re a good choice because of their scale. However guns are also efficient at killing and cars are efficient at escaping, should we also get rid of both because they&#x27;re used by criminals?<p>Any database containing data and thus value becomes a target. Should we also stop creating any kind of database because it might become a potential target? So medical records, court proceedings, tax records, insurance claims and every other database should immediately be destroyed because someone might want to access it? Again the real problem here is the fact that criminals will be criminals, not the tools they use or targets they go after. There should absolutely be more safeguards with ad networks along with liability as I&#x27;ve stated in previous posts (and I&#x27;m doing my best to make that happen) but arguing that we should get rid of the advertising model because of some security issues does not make sense.