For a long time, I didn’t use an ad blocker because I wanted to support the sites I read. About a year or so ago, sites like The Daily Beast and Salon started running dynamic JavaScript powered ads and video content that caused my browser to slow down dramatically or freeze. Running ads that destroy the experience of people reading the site is extremely short sighted. So short sighted that you have to wonder what they were thinking, if they thought at all. So now I run ad blockers so I can read these sites.

A huge problem with the Internet is that we’ve taught people that web content and services are free. Obviously this is not true. Good content requires talented writers and editors.

As the developer of the nderground social network I have first hand experience with the fact that web services like nderground are not free. nderground is supported by tens of thousands of lines of complex Groovy/Java code, running on Amazon Web Services. If I paid someone else to develop nderground it would have cost at least $200,000.

Although we may offer an ad-free subscription option for nderground, other social networks have found that few users subscribe, even if the cost is only $1/month level. Eventually nderground, like other web services, must be supported by advertising. I would prefer that this not be the case, but I don’t see any way around it. In the end, you have to pay your bills.