Or educate users to pay for quality and make quality websites/products so we don't have to depend on advertising. This would be insanely difficult to pull off,

Or educate users to pay for quality and make quality websites/products so we don't have to depend on advertising. This would be insanely difficult to pull off, but it is at least worth a try. The incumbents have trained users to expect everything on the internet for free. People think they pay $75 (or whatever their internet connection costs) and that should cover everything - news, search, email... How many people even pay for super important stuff like email? No wonder ads are everywhere, like bad smell.