I don’t know that your counterpoint makes much sense either. Just because the web has devolved into a centralized ad-powered mess doesn’t mean that’s how things should operate. And I do mean mess, consider the many overlapping, sometimes competing rules each advertiser has the right to impose on the location their ads may appear.
I personally consider advertisements to be psychological warfare, an unfortunate requirement for business today. If we allow the “local maximum” that advertising is to fester, the number of spaces and the amount of time occupied by ads pretty much is required to steadily increase.
Let’s just… Not do it. AdBlock, open-source browsers and services to promote privacy, while making it clear that the money to run the servers has to come from somewhere.
I donate to Wikipedia every year. Signal, proton, several git projects… If you can help, please do. If you can’t/won’t, we’ll try to keep the ship moving along anyway.