They are over-valuing the content that the users generate, and under-valuing the value the mods generate.

They also don’t think that anyone will actually jump ship.

The only value ANY of these social media sites have (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, whatever) is that they already have users there. None of those sites are worth anything without the people bringing content.

I am waiting for Apollo to die, which according to Christian, will be June 30th.

At the end of the day, running a server does cost money, and people’s goodwill will only go so far. I don’t want to have to pay directly for every service, website, or whatever I see, but don’t mind doing it from time to time.

I buy a lot of DVD’s, blurays, or 4K UHD movies and tv shows, and then immediately rip them onto my Jellyfin server so that I know I will be able to watch them when I want, how I want. I feel like that does my karma of supporting the creators of those shows.

Advertisements allow me to watch everything else. There are youtube channels I follow, that get sponsored by “NordVPN” or whatever, and even though I don’t use Nord, and would probably go out of my way to NOT use them because of all of the sponsorship messages I see, I am glad they give money to the creators I like.

The real problem is when they become too intrusive. I use ad blockers to remove Youtube ads, because I don’t want a video to be split up abruptly while watching it. If there was a simple, short, ad before the videos, I would have no problem with them, but they became intrusive, so I block them.

A lot of the VALUE of a news article on the internet is the ability to share it and discuss it with everyone else. Paywalls remove that value, or require all of the people you share it with to already have subscriptions to everything else.

News has been paid for via advertisements for a lot longer than the internet. The subscription fees for Newspapers really only covered the printing and distribution costs, while the reporters’ salaries were paid for via advertising.

The problem is that the advertising has gotten TOO intrusive. It isn’t just a banner ad anymore. It is a ton of banners speckled between every other paragraph on the page. As soon as advertising gets in the way, people will look to get around it.

I have found that I am overly sensitive to almost all forms of push-advertising (as opposed to pull-advertising where I am looking for marketing materials on something I want to research). I have browser ad blockers as well as DNS based ones on my wifi. I also watch very little broadcast TV. I have no problem waiting for a season of a TV show to be on DVD so I can watch it without breaks, or the annoying banners that pop up while watching.

I also usually play without bitters, so there’s no time pressure

This is what I did when I started as well. Factorio, in my mind, is a logistics/building game, not a combat game. Playing without biters lets you learn the base building techniques.

As for not getting overwhelmed with the base, make sure to divide and conquer. Break up the next goal into smaller projects, and work on those one at a time.

Also, leave space between your assemblers. You can always build out more.