LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 15:45 UTC (Tue) by xuxa (guest, #29601)
Parent article: LWN advertising update

For what it's worth, I'd much rather pay more for my subscription than increase the ads at lwn.net (whether or not those ads are only seen by non-subscribers). I think advertising is fundamentally bad for society. The consumption encouraged by advertising, often by making people feel inadequate or scared, outweighs its benefits of information distribution.

For these reasons, I hope lwn can find ways to be productive and profitable without resorting to increased advertising. I worry that with increased income from ads, lwn will incur increased costs and become dependent on an anti-social form of income. As a musician trying to design my life around creating GPL-style music, I understand how difficult it is to eschew traditional, entrenched forms of income. But I think lwn, with its intelligent, aware writers and readers, is in a position to explore exciting, new business models that do not resort to the implementation of increased advertising.