The same way that reading HN can benefit users. A lot of the posted blog articles are covert advertising anyway. Ads do not benefit the user directly, they benefit the business, which expands and improves its products, which itself benefits the user. Advertising is indispensable for business growth, and are never going to go away, they 'll just change format
> A lot of the posted blog articles are covert advertising anyway.
And a lot of them aren't, and a big reason why people read HN or /r/$someNiche instead of an industry news site is because community link aggregators do a good job at weeding out the advertising.
> Ads do not benefit the user directly, they benefit the business, which expands and improves its products, which itself benefits the user.
I'd be careful, because this line of argument can justify anything a business does to make more money, because "they'll expand and improve its products". In reality, the "improvement" of a product is measured by its profitability, so if you let a business play unfairly and abusively, they'll only do more of that.
