> "Just block the mainstream and only follow your subculture," you say. Every single niche community I can find, no matter how small, has had its discourse completely corrupted by the new, ad-driven internet.

I run the servers and occasionally write for www.angrymetalguy.com. We don't run ads. We get about a million hits from humans each month. We have one of the healthiest comment sections I'm aware of on the internet. How?

Everyone contributes unpaid (other than via access to promo copies of the music we review). The running costs (about $30 a month) come from the pockets of the senior staff. We recently switched away from Disqus for our comment system because the enforced adverts had become too obnoxious; we now use an open source project run by Vox Media.

I don't think this is really a sustainable model for the internet as a whole though - the effort and skillset running this all takes is significant and there's just not many people who'll do this sort of thing for free or worse. I don't know what the alternative is.

Pretty much everywhere else on the internet I used to love has atrophied or worse as time marches on, and I hate it.