What percentage of mobile app development is paid for with ads?
What percentage of web development is paid for with ads?
How many open source projects are contributed to by developers who work at companies that rely on ads to you, pay their actual bills
How many “side projects” on this site are paid for with ads
How many projects are B2B where the other B is in ads, or relied on ads, or relies on something that relies on ads.
Sometimes I love HN but then I remember how, frankly, full of shit some people are.
We’ve built this house of cards on ads. If ads go, the industry will collapse into a shadow of itself and half of you won’t get to eat.
It’s nice to act like ads are just this evil thing devs invented but surprise surprise, they’re a form of payment because people don’t like to pay for stuff.
Remove the way people pay for stuff and suddenly this industry where you make 6 figures for jerking off to javascript frameworks doesn’t make sense.
Lots of sites sell things, which is enough reason to make those sites. Millions of sites are representing businesses (restaurant etc). No, the web isn't going away because joe shmoe can't put up ads. Its so cheap to put up a website anyway, folks do it for many reasons.
The Software industry would retract almost to the point of death relative to its current size without ads.
