It's already enough to just have plain ads. Like we have them on the streets, at the bus station, newspapers, etc. No tracking needed at all, just give out the message. If you need to target people to it in the context of the place or content you are showing it with. But you don't need to know anything about the user seeing the ad. Targeting by user doesn't work anyway.

I don't think it has to go that far. I think there's a middle ground here that people would accept: show us ads, but make it a one-way firehose, like TV and billboards. If you need to advertise to pay for the site, put up all the banners you want. But don't try to single me out for a specific one.

If it could pay for network TV there's no reason it can't pay for a website.

(You could still do audience-level tracking, e.g. "Facbebook and NCIS are both for old people, so advertise cruises and geriatric health services on those properties")

Reddit has fairly extensive device fingerprinting. And they are selling data for training AI models. It's only a matter of time before there is some premium phone app that monetizes data that otherwise isn't available/for sale.

This type of thing is pure greed, completely distinct from a highly aggressive pursuit of far more lucrative opportunities that average businessmen have been able to accomplish in the extreme interest of their shareholders.

Those true leaders are the traditional examples who have shown success over the centuries, without letting any greed whatsoever become a dominant force, recognizing and moving in the opposite direction from those driven by overblown self-interest, who naturally have little else to offer. It can be really disgraceful these days but people don't seem to care any more.

That's one thing that made them average businessmen though.

Now if you're below-average I understand, but most companies' shareholders would be better off with a non-greedy CEO, who outperforms by steering away from underhanded low-class behavior instead.

Now if greed is the only thing on the table, and somebody like a CEO or decision-making executive hammers away using his only little tool with admirable perseverance long enough, it does seem to have a likelihood of bringing in money that would not have otherwise come in.

This can be leveraged too, by sometimes even greedier forces.

All you can do is laugh, those shareholders might be satisfied, but just imagine what an average person could do with that kind of resources. It would put the greedy cretins to shame on their own terms.

And if you could find an honest above-average CEO, woo hoo !

The majority of internet users are either unwilling or unable to pay for content, and so far advertising has been the best business model to allow these users to access content without paying. Do you have a better suggestion?

The question is how do you ban it, and then how do you prove that people are breaking those rules?

It's impossible and we all know it. Instead, donate or help with the huge adblock lists that are being maintained by a lot of people

>all so that CEOs can afford an extra yacht

...and so consumers can use services/products without having to fork over money.

People love the ad-model. Given the option to pay or use the "ad-supported" option, the ad-supported one wins 10 to 1. This means in many cases it doesn't even make sense to have a paid option, because the ad option is just so much more popular.

As bad as crypto is, with all the negative things attached to it, BAT was probably one of the smartest things to be invented. A browser token that automatically dispenses micropayments to websites you visit. Forget all the details to get snagged on, the basic premise is solid: Pay for what you use. You become the customer, not the advertisers.

Also a note about ad-blocking - it only makes the problem worse. It is not a "stick it to the man" protest. You protest things by boycotting them, or paying their competitors, not by using them without compensating them.

The deprecation of third-party cookies, that all browsers were at one point on track to implement, was pretty much the most realistic first step to that. Which is why Google killed it last year by leveraging their control over Chrome.

While not technically a crime, it was a disgusting, unethical market manipulation move that never really got the public outrage it deserved.

Google execs’ initial support for it was also telling: leadership at Google must literally thought they would find another way to stay as profitable as they are without third-party cookies. Put another way: Google leadership didn’t understand cookies as well as someone who’s taken a single undergrad web dev class. (Or they were lying all along, and always planned to “renege” on third-party cookie deprecation.)