Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah yes, the "internet we want", where Ad geniuses will spam you for the same thing you just bought off Amazon and mobile sites turning your phone into a hand warmer with all the ad crap they have to load and all the 3rd party cookies they add
And yet, before GDPR, when all of this was happening, those sites still saw increase in visitors and still made money, because people learned to ignore the ads since the design of the core website was pretty good and ads were not obtrusive to user experience.
"They still made money" sure, on top of externalities.
And now they realize, with some help from Apple and Chrome that this business model has a limit