The truth is that the internet kinda needs at least some ads to be viable.
It really does not.
- Wikipedia does not need ads (it’s supported by donations).
- Bittorrent does not need ads (the load is distributed to the users themselves).
- Labor-of-love amateur websites from the '90s (that had more actual useful information than the SEO-optimized lazily-copywritten (or increasingly, AI-generated) bullshit we have today does) did not need ads.
- Fediverse services do not need ads (being a combination of donation-supported nodes and, in the case of PeerTube, Bittorrent-style load distribution).
Frankly, if all the corporate content that exists only to make a buck off advertising were deleted tomorrow, the Internet not only would remain viable, it would be better off!
I hate that they decided to have Morpheus hold up a battery instead of a processor because some empty suit thought audiences were too stupid to get it.