Not a tautology. Just insufficiently creative thinking. Don't most of us here remember the olden days of the web? When internet advertising was a waste of time

Not a tautology. Just insufficiently creative thinking. Don't most of us here remember the olden days of the web? When internet advertising was a waste of time and most websites were funded from the pockets of the creators. I mean, even today that's partly common - how many bloggers and podcasters are asking for topup funding. It's silly and wrong to think the internet would die without advertisers. Big content producers could make fairly priced single article access (don't you remember micropayments? instead we got subscriptions), and generally return commerce to the olden days when people anonymously purchased what they wanted from a shop, instead of signining away access to their bank account and email address (password collection points abound in the modern internet, deliberately or not, and everyone who encourages us to create a password is damaging the personal security). Amateurs could use such platforms as well as advertising driven tools that are merely less effective at stalking you. Really it's only the stalkers themselves who would be hurt by such a change. I am, of course, delusional. But I can dream.