For those of you advocating for a payment model over the ad model, I want you to consider two perspectives. First, consider the people who will be denied access to information on the basis of class. People who consider it a luxury to be online at all, let alone logging on to find a paywall for basic news. Now consider the editors at the Washington Post, who now have to cater the demographic who can pay their fees. Instead of reaching billions, the Washington Post can now only reach tens of millions. Instead of providing economic opportunity to small businesses that need to advertise online to compete with larger companies, the Washington Post now has to compete just to pay it's staff writers a fair wage.
Things are never as black and white as we think they are. Privacy should be respected, but we should also respect that the internet could be much less free without advertising. We might not have the many amazing websites and services that we take for granted everyday without ad funding. Many small businesses run by entrepreneurs might never grow their bushinesses without the equalizing opportunity of online ads.