This isn't how equilbria work. Netflix was a superior product to piracy in many ways: no perceived legal risk, reliable access, high quality guaranteed, way better ease of use. These barriers were high enough that plenty of people didn't pirate at all and stuck with nonsense like DVDs for way too long, so the incentive path pointed smoothly towards switching to Netflix, a Pareto improvement for non-pirates and a fairly easy trade-off for pirates.
There's no such path for web content: adblockers are unquestionably legal, easy to set up, provide a better experience, and even non-users of adblockers have a trillion non-paywalled sources in an ecosystem where it's tough for strong brand loyalty to survive en masse. What advantages do you imagine a paywall option offering to people when their alternative is better in almost every respect?
> There are models that work, e.g. Patreon, but those usually don't scale up to, say, the Washington Post or CNN.
This isn't how equilbria work. Netflix was a superior product to piracy in many ways: no perceived legal risk, reliable access, high quality guaranteed, way better ease of use. These barriers were high enough that plenty of people didn't pirate at all and stuck with nonsense like DVDs for way too long, so the incentive path pointed smoothly towards switching to Netflix, a Pareto improvement for non-pirates and a fairly easy trade-off for pirates.
There's no such path for web content: adblockers are unquestionably legal, easy to set up, provide a better experience, and even non-users of adblockers have a trillion non-paywalled sources in an ecosystem where it's tough for strong brand loyalty to survive en masse. What advantages do you imagine a paywall option offering to people when their alternative is better in almost every respect?
> There are models that work, e.g. Patreon, but those usually don't scale up to, say, the Washington Post or CNN.