> Figure out something better.

There is no magical solution. The alternative is some kind of payment system.

And many people can't afford paying for each site they visit, so it would limit people's access to the net if there were paywalls everywhere.

Also, if sites can't show ads and not enough people subscribes then many sites will close which would lead to further concentration of the web. Small players would be eliminated, big players would still thrive.

Independent journalism would decrease while sites financed by rich companies and people could keep running and promoting the agenda of the rich players.

If people can't afford paying, then it follows that they can't afford being advertised at in order to stimulate their consumption beyond what they actually need. If the answer to that is that people are of course in their right to ignore advertisements (as if that is possible), then by extension blocking them outright is morally defensible as well, and we are right back to where we are now.

Either that, or on-line advertising is not nearly as effective as advertisers think it is, and they are just subsidising the whole shebang while the Facebooks and Googles profit.

As for journalism: yes, that is tricky. Personally, I'm subscribed to one national quality newspaper (NRC in the Netherlands) as my main source of news and research journalism, and just today I've set up an annual subscription for €12 with the Guardian, which I visit occasionally as it is one of the few reliable British sources for news on the whole Brexit ordeal.

Ideally, I would pay a monthly flat fee that I can distribute at the end of each month to participating websites I've visited, but such a system would have to be fair to both the consumers and the publishing websites. If it just ends up a system with yet another FAANG-like Silicon Valley middleman that takes a 30% cut I'm not interested.

> If people can't afford paying, then it follows that they can't afford being advertised

You know the answer to that. People can pay with their data, their interests. And if you put the question to people if they want a free web which sells their data or pay for every site then most people will choose the first.

And what is that data used for, if not targetted advertising?

The data is a means to an end: the ability to provide advertisers with a way to reach very specific groups of people, and a way for advertising platforms to track not just the same user, but a very detailed user profile.

Knowing what people's interests are is worth diddly-squat until you use that knowledge to push ads to them that are likely to resonate with them.

>The alternative is what we do now: a select group with tech savvy blocks advertisements, and lets the masses pick up the bill by 'accepting' ads and having their every movement online tracked.

And I like it. I know it's selfish; I'm just speaking my mind.

Soon, there will be so many people blocking ads that many websites will simply become pay-per-view, and that's going to be bad for me.

Then we work around that, with a Sci-Hub style approach.