When will we realize that adwords and everything it inspired was a wrong turn for the internet? I’d much rather pay a monthly fee to get the services I want. I understand that Google and Facebook have gone too far down this path, and they will say such a service is not as profitable, but ultimately their business model seems unsustainable. People search for the truth, and while you can sell anybody anything, the trut…
As long as you realize the web without ads is a much smaller and less commercial one. That may be fine with you. But a lot of things hundreds of millions of people use every day would have to go away. Subscriptions can't replace ads, as individuals don't have nearly as much discretionary money to spend as companies have in their advertising budgets. We've already given them that money when we bought our groceries, an…
As an example every single Amazon or web product or service search results in dozens to thousands of irrelevant, shoddy and worthless products and services that are far closer to an outright scam than something to use. That's without considering the vast array of true scams and fakes.
A web without ads would have a chance of being useful once again, rather than every single click being an opportunity to part me from more money. Perhaps with suitable heavy regulation we could have the best of both worlds, more like newspaper advertising of old. Just "enough" non-invasive, non-tracking, non-JS ads to provide information on new services and products, but with enough demands of honesty, escrow good behaviour deposits, or whatever constraints you can conceive to keep all advertisers well behaved.