Is the internet a public utility?

[Ulu]

Re. Youtube, twitter et al, They're not publishers, and they're not a utility. They are marketing companies. How do they make money? Selling ads. Take that away and they vanish! There's the evidence: They sell ads.

But what about the whole Web? Without ad revenue and hucksterism, would subscriber fees cover much at all? Or would it start to fold up?

 

[kno4te]

You’re right money makes it viable. Don’t think it’ll fold up but it wouldn’t be as lucrative as professional socialites make it now. The socializing aspect is still something desired for amongst ourselves. It may change the format. Don’t think subscriber fees would cover the whole web for that matter.

 

[Ulu]

The power bill for internet servers is enormous, and it's only paid for by the millions of dollars per day in advertising.

90% of the people on the web watch 90% of what's on it for free. Okay maybe that's an overestimation but I'm sure it's pretty high

It costs me $6 for every 50,000 page views on my website, in order not to have advertisements. I can host 1mb images without extra charge.

(I fund this out of my pocket so my members don't have to watch ads. But it's a tiny site with a small population of friends. It's not intended to make me money.)

If I was General Motors I'd be paying a lot less per view, but I'd be getting way more hits.

Anyhow multiply that $6/50k * the billions of daily page views on the internet and you'll get some idea of the cost.