This is a complex and nuanced question that is not as black and white as the binary choices you give. Both paywalls and ads, as they are implemented currently, suck and erode away at the usefulness of the Internet.

Paywalls

They typically tease content in the hopes people will be interested enough to pay for the content and other content. Sounds good on the surface, because the people putting in the effort to write articles should be paid. The problem is, the quality of journalism has also eroded to the point where it’s not worth paying for as much as it used to be. Excessive SEO has poisoned search results in such a way that paywalls content crowds out other valid search results. Throw in the fact that there is a possible future where articles may be written by AI, and it’s especially not worth it.

Ads

Ads are intrusive, they can contain malware/viruses, may be inappropriate for an audience (e.g., porn or violence related ads shown to kids). I’ve even had ads redirect the webpage to another website. Using fingerprinting to target “relevant” ads is a privacy nightmare, intrusive, and still is mostly irrelevant to the user. Those cookie pops are annoying as fuck — my guess is it’s malicious compliance with the EU — even when using a site that is based in the US that targets only US citizens. Certain browsers are blurring the lines between useful browser functionality and increasing ad revenue.

Either way you look at it, these companies are eroding public trust in search of the almighty “engagement” dollar. And then they’re all shocked pikachu when people find ways to circumvent paying for content. So they double down on making things as difficult as possible for the end user, which makes the user double down on hating these companies and their malicious practices.

Ads and paywalls can work, but everybody (from publishers/content creators to advertisers and ad networks) need to sit down fix the glaring problems:

1. No PII or fingerprinting in any analytics
2. Search engines need to either remove paywalls content from results, or flag the result as paywalled and allow users to filter them out
3. Journalists need to step up their game and stop writing garbage nobody wants to read
4. Ad networks need to be more hands on with making sure ads are appropriate and not malicious in any way
5. STOP CROWDING OUT YOUR CONTENT WITH ADS!

I’m sure we all could come up with more solutions. But we all know that all parties involved won’t do a damned thing to make things better for us.

And yet no matter how bad it gets, it still somehow is profitable. So pirating material doesn’t seem to be an effective means of protest because it seems there are enough people out there willing to pay for all of this garbage.

Ads, tastefully. Many websites have too many in too many places, pretty much asking for the viewers to use an ad blocker.

Depends on the site. Ads don't bother me because ad block. I support paywalls in the case of sign up for some services, like InsaneJournal. Though, I otherwise have no preference either way since I usually don't go places with paywalls and when I do, I usually find a way to bypass them.

Ads. I've been online since the age of Gopher. I've gone through every kind of ad or a pop-up you can throw at me. Even though I use an adblock, even without it I can subconsciously filter out ads so well that they won't bother me.

Ads. If done well, I may even see it. I am talking about the ad just being an embedded GIF with a href set on it so that clicking it goes to the advertiser's site. Simple privacy-respecting ads.

Example: https://lowendbox.com/
Look at the right and scroll down.

Neither. Give me an easy option to donate. Even better, make it possible to donate based on how many times I visit the website, then give me an overview at the end of the month and let me split my budget.

The question is a bit loaded, since "prefer ads" means you see the content, whereas "prefer paywalls" means you don't.

A fairer framing would have been: "how do you prefer to pay for content?"

Because, contrary to many opinions here, there is a price to pay when you watch an ad. At the very least, you're paying with your sanity. And very possibly you're paying with your wallet too, later, when you buy some product or service you don't really need. If ads didn't work, there wouldn't be so many of them.

Next, in a world where content is funded by advertising, the people who control our tech have an infernal incentive to spy on us - so we all end up paying with our privacy.

Advertising is the lifeblood of consumer capitalism. It's what powers the pseudo-needs and pseudo-desires and status competition that drives all that material throughput of JUNK that is killing our planet. That price tag is gonna be pretty hefty.

Advertising is sheer poison. But paywalls are not the enemy. It is not immoral to pay for things that have value.

I honestly think services like Apple News plus would be worth subscribing to if they didn’t charge so much and didn’t have ads. Having a “newspass” service where you could just pay $5 to bypass paywalls across multiple sites would be worth the money. The problem is that providers are addicted to that sweet ad revenue, so even paying a subscription fee on most sites means you’re still seeing annoying ads.

Make your content good enough and be a good enough person so that people are willing to give you money voluntarily or for token rewards. Let those with the means subsidize those without.

Occasionally you see something and the comments are full of "let me throw money at you". Maybe at least partially try that as a goal rather than searching for infinite growth at the expense of anyone who isn't an executive.

It depends.

Ads for something I use rarely or am not quite sure about.

But I pay for Netflix, and I suppose that's a paywall.

What's super annoying is when a website has both, and they autoplay. Like most news sites, and if you pause Netflix, something else will start playing, with sound even. I want to pay for what I use... but dayum.

I prefer ads because I can block them. 👍