The problem is that ad revenue so often becomes the escape hatch from an economically hard problem.

Need more money? Economic model not quite working? Companies face this all the time. Some solve it innovatively, survive, and show everyone else the way forward. Others fold or pivot.

But ad revenue short-circuits the hard process of economic innovation by tempting tech companies to take an easy way out, even when the problem is solvable without it.

(All of this wouldn't really be a problem if the ads business model weren't inherently adversarial against users.)