Indie websites are a dying breed

So many good websites with so many problems these days. Consider this desperate plea from Snopes:

We're hitting the alarm. We need your help to save one of the internet's precious resources.

It’s quite a polished campaign. Graphics and everything!

Scroll down past all the payment buttons to see their note about what’s going on. I had no idea. In a nutshell: they are being legally harassed. Ugh.

Another example. Much like my own PainScience.com, the technology website TechDirt.com is idealistically committed to eschewing toxic internet technologies, especially gross ads:

Here's the unfortunate secret underpinning nearly all of the internet advertising space: there are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies which will purport to put ads on your website. And all of them will promise "quality" ads and better rates. But the unfortunate reality is that they're all just backstopped by Google, and the ads are all the same crappy ads in the end.

But their idealism is making it hard to survive, of course. Tell me about it! John Gruber:

Indie websites that neither run crappy ads nor put their content behind a paywall are a dying breed.