Most types of ads can be blocked with uBlock Origin, while only some kinds of paywalls can be skipped with Bypass Paywalls Clean. Ads are the most privacy invasive monetization solution and with ad blocking becoming more common, I don’t think ads are a sustainable way to fund content in the future. Still, I would prefer to see voluntary subscription and donation options rather than hard paywalls.

Neither; use FOSS!

But in all seriousness, ads. They may be filled with trackers from big tech to try to know my every waking thought and sell them, but I have handy dandy software to deal with that.

I prefer ads, as I can block them.

Ad’s. If a sites using the paywall approach, they’ve made an enemy for life with me.

Now I’m not saying I like ads, but as long as they aren’t aggressive I will tolerate them. If they get to aggressive, I’ll block them.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand it’s a business, but I’m a human with a low tolerance for being jerked around.

False dichotomy, I’d rather see other funding models like Patreon/Kickstarter. Paying gets you early access/bonus stuff/whatever, and you don’t need intrusive technologies like ads/paywalls.

Funny that changing your UA to like Googlebot means you can see the content since website owners want search indexing

Paywalls for news. It makes it easy for me to know that this is not an important news article and can skip reading it. Time saving.

Banners! I was fine with banners, you can look at them or not if you want, you can click them or not… guess they weren’t profitable anymore.

Ads, tastefully. Many websites have too many in too many places, pretty much asking for the viewers to use an ad blocker.

I can block ads 100% reliably, and haven’t seen one, except in streams where the streamer had to watch one, or someone else’s device, in years. Paywalls are much harder to circumvent and need a whole plethora of extensions and 3rd party sites, instead of just uBlock + FF.

Ads. I was born in the 1900s so I’m used to it.

It depends on the implementation, in both cases. I can somewhat tolerate:

• ads that are visually distinct from the actual content, not personalised or targetted, not obstrusive or obnoxious
• paywalls that apply to recent news, but don’t get in your way while you’re looking for older stuff

Go past that and I’m avoiding your ads with uBlock and your paywalls with archive links. And, more importantly: there are other financing methods, such as Patreon.

I wouldn’t mind paying but once more and more site adopt the subscribtion model, then prices like $10 a month becomes unsustainable when you need dozens of subscribtions. I believe that microtransactions are the future of the internet. All content should cost for you to view but only a little bit so that it adds up to like 20 - 50 bucks a month and the money goes mostly to the creators rather than platform.

I don’t like ads, but for paywalls I just close the page like it was a 404 error.

I mean, to be honest a lot of us prefer ads because we use an ad-blocker. I have mixed feelings about either option.

There is such a thing as a tasteful implementation of advertising, but it’s very often overdone and a nuisance. So because so many of them are a nuisance, my general attitude is to block everything. If you want to support a particular cause or creator, you can allow filters in your ad-blocker so you only see ads on that website.

As far as paywalls go, it does resemble the traditional newspaper/magazine subscription model. In theory, I don’t mind financially contributing to a service I use because it means the service continues to prosper. Practically, these fees are often overinflated and a disproportionate amount of the proceeds go to the executive class. Also unlike newspapers, you usually can’t buy just one article, and instead you’re locked into another subscription.