I hate ads and I would prefer not to have to run them on DU, but the simple fact is that without them there wouldn’t be enough income to operate the site.
That’s because the amount of money that comes from Star Memberships isn’t enough to run DU on its own. I get that people don’t want to pay for Internet stuff, but you can’t run a site like DU without income.
Then there’s the paradox that if DU were free of ads, there would be even less incentive for people to buy a Star Membership. Why buy one, when you can read everything for free, without annoying ads?
So if we removed all the ads, we’d lose the revenue they bring in, and fewer people would choose to pay to keep the site running. Under those circumstances DU would be gone from the Internet within a couple of months, simply because there would be no money to operate it.
Removing some of the ads leads to a similar result as removing all of the ads, only somewhat slower.
I suppose hypothetically DU could be a private site only for people who have Star Memberships and still afford to run, but I would prefer to keep it open to as many people as possible. The trade off for doing that is annnoying ads.
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