So true.

It is shortsighted to value your readers only for their capacity to view and click advertisements.

Readers also act as distribution nodes, sharing content that they find compelling with others who may or may not use ad blockers.

Building walls will result in fewer readers, and as you've noted, less traffic will be bad in the long term...

Odd how working for exposure is decried when business owners want designers or devs to do it, but grand when we want publishers to do it.

Exposure IS worth something and a business that pays a team of analysts and other professionals ought to be in a position to access this and decide accordingly. In this case in the long run something is better than nothing which is what wired will end up with.

As a publication they have little to offer to justify their high subscription cost and the portion of people interested in tech who don't use an ad blocker will eventually be the empty set.

Alternatively they could offer tasteful text and image ads served from their own domain and many people would be willing to allow them.

I'm enjoying the meta - ad machine that sometimes writes about ads writing about its own new ad plans.

So tech is having a shake-out at the moment - many assumptions being questioned, many business models being challenged, many unicorns revealed as dead horses.

Considering how little of genuine value these businesses contribute - including Wired - I'm not sure they're going to be heavily mourned if they disappear.

Is anyone really going to mind much if the Distraction Economy dies over the next few years?