The missing part of this sentence is "as they exist now". There are other models that exist that could support broadcast and publications. There are other models yet to be explored or that have floundered because they've been snuffed out or avoided because the easiest (for certain values of "easy") path to dollars, right now, is advertising.
It is a pipe dream, of course -- and the author of the piece doesn't really do the hard work of following through on not just how difficult it would be to make advertising illegal, but the ramificaitons. While an ad-free world would be wonderful, that's a lot of people out of a job real quick-like. Deciding what constitutes an "ad" versus content marketing or just "hey, this thing exists" would be harder than it might seem at first thought.
Which models are there? The only other ones I know is patreon-like, which totally destroy the long tail.
And long-tail ones are the best. There are some great videos on youtube which are 10+ years old and do not have millions of views. I am sure many of their uploaders already forgot about them. I cannot see them existing without being supported by "something", and if that's not advertisement, than what?
Are you referring to a model for supporting YouTube hosting the videos or for the people who produce the videos?
YouTube already has subscriptions. An ad-free YouTube could extend that and maybe add lower tiers of subscriptions for X hours per month viewing. This would be a double-win, if YouTube's were centered around catering to users and not maximizing time on site with The Algorithm(TM) to ensure people see more ads -- which also encourages some of the worst content on YT.
But a big shift like ridding the world of advertising would, of course, have tradeoffs. Maybe that would be "long tail" videos on YouTube. If you can get rid of ads and have to lose those, is it worth it? Conversely, what has advertising killed off that we might be able to have again if it was gone?
The missing part of this sentence is "as they exist now". There are other models that exist that could support broadcast and publications. There are other models yet to be explored or that have floundered because they've been snuffed out or avoided because the easiest (for certain values of "easy") path to dollars, right now, is advertising.
It is a pipe dream, of course -- and the author of the piece doesn't really do the hard work of following through on not just how difficult it would be to make advertising illegal, but the ramificaitons. While an ad-free world would be wonderful, that's a lot of people out of a job real quick-like. Deciding what constitutes an "ad" versus content marketing or just "hey, this thing exists" would be harder than it might seem at first thought.