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How is that possible while respecting viewers' privacy? As far as I'm aware, most web ads are served through a third-party server that not only serves ads but also builds an interest dossier based on tracking each viewer's request history across multiple websites. I guess websites could fall back to self-hosted ads when the browser fails to connect to the tracking server, but I haven't seen a lot of sites whose coding is smart enough for this sort of ad replacement.

In addition, sites end up playing the "Ads alone don't pay enough CPM to keep our writers fed" card.

Without advertisements, how should a site's operator pay its writers, its server operators, and its bandwidth bill? Paywalls don't work for sites that rely on traffic from search engines. What's the third way, besides ads and paywalls, to fund a site that is larger in scope than a hobby?

Lemme guess -- your entire livelihood is dependent on pushing content on users that they didn't ask for and don't want to see.

How to make publishing on the internet cost effective is a completely different argument. The point about AMP and many other Google brainfarts is that while they claim it is about creating a better user experience, the goal is simply to flood users with more ad impressions. If that sounds good to you, go with Google. If your user's experience is not enhanced by ads, and you content does not require organic search to find its audience, you are free to ignore Google and their bullshit.

Without advertisements, how should a site's operator pay its writers, its server operators, and its bandwidth bill? Paywalls don't work for sites that rely on traffic from search engines. What's the third way, besides ads and paywalls, to fund a site that is larger in scope than a hobby?

Try this:

1. Install Firefox (desktop).
2. Open Firefox and run a Slashdot browsing session.
3. Look at Firefox's memory use.
4. In about:config, set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true. This enables Firefox's built-in tracking blocker. In practice, it behaves as an ad blocker because most sites neglect to replace tracking-based elements that fail to load with ads that don't track the user.
5. Restart Firefox and run a comparable Slashdot browsing session.
6. Look at Firefox's memory use. See how much memory was wasted on tracking the user.

I don't run an ad blocker; I run a tracking blocker. This provides plausible deniability should a site's legal department decide that ad blocking is a DMCA* or CFAA* violation.

* Or foreign counterparts.

I'd rather reduce the 30 components to 5 by using an adblock and a tracker script blocker

Which doesn't work so well once the majority of commercial news-editorial sites start to make everything past the abstract JavaScript-dependent and use the DMCA, CFAA, or foreign counterparts against developers and users of filter lists that use anti-anti-adblock.

I'd rather reduce the 30 components to 5 by using an adblock and a tracker script blocker

Which doesn't work so well once the majority of commercial news-editorial sites start to make everything past the abstract JavaScript-dependent and use the DMCA, CFAA, or foreign counterparts against developers and users of filter lists that use anti-anti-adblock.

I'd rather reduce the 30 components to 5 by using an adblock and a tracker script blocker

Which doesn't work so well once the majority of commercial news-editorial sites start to make everything past the abstract JavaScript-dependent and use the DMCA, CFAA, or foreign counterparts against developers and users of filter lists that use anti-anti-adblock.

Unobtrusive ads

I'm told that ads wouldn't be obtrusive if unobtrusive ads brought in enough revenue to continue operations. Advertisers are willing to pay far more for obtrusive ads, and switching from obtrusive ads to unobtrusive ads might cause your favorite site to bring in so little revenue that it has to stop responding to HTTP requests.

and asking nicely for people to turn off the blocker

This sort of "begging" is reported to have anemic results.

The ads shouldn't [...] track me.

The only ads that can be proven not to track viewers are ads hosted by a site itself. And those have a far lower revenue per thousand impressions for two reasons. First, most advertisers don't know that a particular site exists in order to bid up prices for the site's inventory of ad space. Second, those that do know that a site exists prefer to advertise through a network with analytics powerful enough to filter out click fraud.

Use a script blocker instead of an ad blocker, and only whitelist the main news page.

Their answer to NoScript is to make everything past the abstract JavaScript-dependent.

So now we need adblockers that detect pages that detect adblockers.

Some already do. But this may violate anti-circumvention law, be it a country's WIPO Copyright Treaty implementation (such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) or laws defining trespass upon a networked computer (such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act).

But if website operators try to assert the DMCA or CFAA against ad blocker developers, the latter will probably end up building plausible deniability into their products. Instead of blocking ads per se, they'll block third-party tracking (such as Disconnect), block content-types, and pause page loads that exceed 1 MB. This CPU throttling appears to have a similar intent.

I support the sites I visit through memberships

Would you be willing to purchase a month's membership to a site for $4 just to be able to view one article past its abstract?

and services like Patreon

I've read reports in comments to an adtech blog that "please put some coins in our cup" isn't enough to fully fund a site's operation unless it puts donation nags in your face like Wikipedia does: "If YOU do not donate, this site will have to SHUT DOWN."

There was a post two weeks ago on an adtech blog suggesting that some publishers* are about to go full DMCA/CFAA on developers of ad blockers that include an ad blocker blocker blocker. By this legal theory, an ad blocker blocker is an "access control" measure, and an ad blocker blocker blocker is a "circumvention device".

Learning about this plan has led me to think of ways to provide a better experience on a metered Internet connection without specifically blocking ads. One is to set a cap on how much data an individual page loads, with a "Load More" button after each megabyte. Another is to block video content types, script content types, and things loaded from third-party domains. If this becomes common, advertisers will at least have to start making their "creative" leaner.

* Operators of websites that carry advertising.

Uhm.. quality websites with well researched articles are generally subscription based

:
Which means readers end up turned away when they try to read one article that was found through a search engine or shared through social media. People have shown themselves unwilling to buy a whole month's worth of access just to read one article.

Fine. Do subscriptions

Most people are unwilling to buy a year's subscription just to read one article. So how do you "Do subscriptions" without turning away users who arrive through citations in search, social media, or other aggregators?

or convince your users to whitelist you

Good luck with that when these sites insist on allowing cross-site interest-based advertising and proprietary JavaScript.

Users are quite happy to fork over money for subscriptions (hulu, netflix, amazon prime, etc) for content if it's at a decent price

Then let me draw an analogy: Paying for a year of Amazon Prime to watch one episode is likely not "at a decent price".

Next to nobody is willing to pay for a whole month just to read one article found through a search engine or through a citation shared by a friend. Imagine having to do this to read one article from each of ten different publications in a month.[1]

[1] "Adblockers say, 'Find a better business model.' But can you really?" posted on 2015-10-12

Put up a paywall - subscribers only.

Say you open a search engine, and you find ten pages, one on each of ten different web sites. But each web site wants $20 for a year's subscription. I don't think most people are willing to buy a year's subscription just for one article from each of these sites.

Increased interest in micro-payment options.

I'm not sure how pay-per-page will work as long as credit cards still have a swipe fee on the order of 33 cents plus 3.3%. And I'm not sure how Bitcoin is a viable alternative when it still has a fee of 0.0001 BTC (currently 4.3 cents) per transaction to discourage dust spam.

What used to buy you a few GB hosting traffic per month, may now by you 1000x that amount.

And what used to buy you ten articles' worth of writing now buys you five.

There is no advertising anywhere that improves the web experience

What are Craigslist and eBay and Amazon.com if not ads?

If you exclude e-commerce and other sites where ads are the content, the known alternatives for paying the hosting bills and writers' salaries are either a not-for-profit company with an endowment or paywalls. But buying a year's subscription to read one article is impractical in a web of linking, searching, and sharing. And it'll remain impractical until microtransactions are figured out.

It's because viewing one single page on each of ten different sites is not worth a separate $60 per year subscription to each site. This in turn is in part because of the transaction fees that the credit card companies charge.

It's become common for a user to read only one article on each of ten sites when he finds articles through web search, citations from other sites, or social sharing. How is anybody going to be willing to subscribe to each of those sites? A pay per page model would have to deal with transaction fees that payment processors charge, which are fairly large for the credit card networks. Even Bitcoin imposes a fee of 0.0001 BTC (currently 2.5 cents) on any transaction smaller than 0.01 BTC (currently 2.50 USD) to discourage "dust spam".

I'm getting sick of nag screens like http://blockadblock.com/ and that all black one that looks like a DOS computer. If I want to white-list I will.

I read somewhere that nag screens like http://blockadblock.com/ on average get about 35% of the adblocked traffic to whitelist. I'm not sure if it's different for major media, but 35% recovery is nothing to sneeze at.

In general it seems like a better strategy, because it won't drive users away entirely and those users might still share on social media.

Aside from being defeated by loads of different adblock blockers (as well as the standard http://blockadblock.com/ generated scripts) there are loads of networks like PageFair that bypass AdBlock anyway. So "letting" acceptable ads through strikes me as a best option in a losing battle.