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!