>The money has to come from somewhere, so advertising it is.
Does it though? If you completely removed profit incentive from some subset of the internet would we really be worse off? Sure, the content would be less professional, less glossy, and there would be less of it, but the content that remained would probably be pretty good and it wouldn't have to compete with mega-corporations with huge advertising budgets.
If you completely removed profit incentive from
some subset of the internet would we really be worse off?
Solo hobbyist and crowdsourced community efforts have always existed online and those of course would continue to exist just fine.
Lots of other stuff doesn't happen unless folks get paid.
Journalism (actual, primary-source journalism, not talking about somebody else's journalism on your blog) takes time and money.
You have to go places, sometimes thousands of miles away, see things, talk to people, and sometimes you spend three months or six months working fulltime on a story and it doesn't pan out. That costs money and lots of it. You can't do it in your spare time while you work a day job.
Citizen journalism is cool, and vital, but it can't do everything.
It's also awfully tough to create art for free in your spare time. It can take a lot of time or money. Certainly a lot of great art was created that way, but think of the great works of art that have survived for decades or centuries. Shakespeare. Michaelangelo. Van Gogh. Dudes were getting paid for making their art full-time, either by selling it directly or via patronage. You think Shakespeare's plays happen on some hobbyist basis while the guy works fifty hours a week shoveling mud or tending sheep? Probably not.
Does it though? If you completely removed profit incentive from some subset of the internet would we really be worse off? Sure, the content would be less professional, less glossy, and there would be less of it, but the content that remained would probably be pretty good and it wouldn't have to compete with mega-corporations with huge advertising budgets.