They'll still surveil even if you pay for the product. Why wouldn't they? It's an additional income stream.

Even websites without ads often have tracking and fingerprinting simply for their own marketing efforts and security features.

> advertising is how folks make money on the web, the surveillance state will persist.

It is more pernicious. Those in the state who want to surveil will enlist those who want the obscene revenue from pervasive advertising. Working together, their lawyers will claim that "you never had any privacy or freedom anyway, so stop wriggling."

At least the solution is obvious, even if the path to an ad-free web is not. And it's a solution that also has the advantage of being a solid public good.

are apps and phones more private?

Advertising doesn't require surveillance though.

Mass surveillance has been the only thing where capitalists and communists wholeheartedly agreed to go all in. It has been pushed into law at every opportunity, done in grey areas when possible, and secretly when illegal.

It's evident proof that information is power.