Honestly, I don't think it'd be possible to return to an internet without advertising, at least not in the sense of people paying for content via microtransacti

Honestly, I don't think it'd be possible to return to an internet without advertising, at least not in the sense of people paying for content via microtransactions or what not. Like it or not, many people now see content as 'free' by default, so their interest in paying a creator to access something is pretty much gone. It's like the situation on smartphones with apps. Many people and companies have tried to get people to pay for them again (like Nintendo with Super Mario Run), but the audience wasn't having any of it, since they'd gotten used to 'free with in game purchases/ads' as the default. So the attempts faltered, and most went back to the exploitative models instead.