If everybody paid for facebook, it would have as many ads, if not more. That companies would leave money on the table with no incentive to do so is a bizarre self-justifying myth that people who live off advertising tell themselves.
You pay for cable. Paying customers are a better audience for ads than deadbeats.
But everybody doesn't pay for Facebook, and the reason they don't do so is because Facebook is funded by ads and no one has paid for a Facebook without ads. But sure, Facebook might hypothetically still have ads if users paid, and my grandmother might hypothetically be a bicycle if she had wheels.
And the way they make money is by someone paying for it. Some sites collect payments from users directly. Facebook collects payments from advertisers because most users wouldn't use Facebook if they had to pay for it.
Do you have a point? This reads like an unfinished thought.
there is absolutely no reason that they cant do both at the same time, there is a mental short circuit going on when people think paying for a website means no ads. Its never meant that in pretty much any other media.
Yes there is a reason, users often don't expect to pay for services that show ads, and users who pay for services often don't expect to see ads. That's why most popular online services don't mix the two, eg. Facebook, Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, Crunchyroll, Google, etc.
"mental short circuit" better describes your argument that jumps from "it's possible to both show ads and charge user fees" to "they always will".
You pay for cable. Paying customers are a better audience for ads than deadbeats.