&gt; You haven&#x27;t actually provided any real counterexample of a 3rd and better option.<p>That&#x27;s because there isn&#x27;t such an option -- at least not that I know of. Ads can be added on top of pretty much any website to generate revenue independent of the actual content of the site itself. And if the content is valuable enough paywalls are also universal in this sense.<p>The &#x27;3rd option&#x27; I&#x27;m proposing is something dependent on the underlying business and admittedly requires creativity and business sense.<p>&gt; The podcast you mentioned is just direct... but rather just a hobby.<p>That&#x27;s quite a simplification -- without the podcast they wouldn&#x27;t sell books, swag, tickets, or receive donations. You can consider their business model as a form of direct payment but no listener is required to give them any form of compensation and their model is much more successful than if they had simply paywalled their content.<p>&gt; The internet is incredibly free, open, democratic and accessible because of ads.<p>I disagree and think it&#x27;s none of those precisely because of ads -- at least as it applies to ad sponsored websites.<p>* Websites that serve ads are not free. We might have to agree to disagree on this point but as long as ads serve their intended purpose they impose a cost on every user that views them.<p>* Ad supported websites are not open, as every part of the ad network except for the literal content served to the client is closed and a trade secret.<p>* Ad supported websites are not democratic because advertisers will not want to have their brand associated with &#x27;unsavory&#x27; topics or opinions which means that the overall content on the web is curated by small group ad networks that effectively &#x27;bless&#x27; content on the web by providing them ad revenue.<p>* The accessibility of ad sponsored content is just an accidental byproduct of paying customers visiting the site. If ad networks had the tools to discriminate between people who had high disposable income then the web would no longer be accessible to the poor as it would make business sense to simply not serve them the page.