Most companies charge people money for goods or services they value and gladly pay for. For them ads are an adjunct to marketing, not a business model. Some other people host stuff for free, some sell content slots (like the job ads here on HN), some give content away to attract other business. That diversity is great, and none of it is threatened by ad blockers. There's more to the world than ads, a lot more.
In contrast the rise of ad companies like taboola is actively degrading content and experiences and debasing previously respected sites. If you insist on showing intrusive advertising, users will go elsewhere. The failure of that business model based on ads is simply not the reader's problem to solve.
7) you doing an MTurk-like task for every site you visit once per day (or per 6h), with an option to bypass by paying a subscription. Payment for the task goes to the site. Cloudflare already has the necessary infrastructure (requires Tor users to do Captchas, for example)...
Number two is the obvious answer. There are several alternative models being explored involving micro-payments or revenue share. Two off the top of my head:
- Brave browser, blocks/replaces all ads by default, ran by one of the founders of Mozilla
Number ② might actually be feasible if micro payments can be implemented in a sensible manner. That is something I would like to see, but it seems hard to get right.
An option missing from your list is sites providing free access to the first few articles in order to generate interest in their paid offerings. Newspapers sometimes do this; on their own sites and at aggregate services providing paid access to the articles from several newspapers and magazines.
Brushing over the core issue as if someone else is certainly going to solve it in a timely fashion through sheer pressure in a way that is going to turn out preferable to advertisement.
What ways can you imagine? Within a few minutes I came up with:
1) Someone else paying for you seeing ads.
2) You paying for using the site or an associated service.
3) Someone else paying for influencing what the site does for you.
4) Someone else paying for your data on that site.
And, the one that people rely on too much:
5) Someone else paying for nothing, hoping the site can be sold later at a profit.
One that can realistically cover only a small portion of sites:
6) The site being run as part of a charity.
Do you find one of those generally more preferable than 1), or can see a point I'm missing?