I'm assuming we don't have any factual disagreements here, it seems like there is just context ambiguity and we're talking past each other. For instance, when

I'm assuming we don't have any factual disagreements here, it seems like there is just context ambiguity and we're talking past each other. For instance, when you say 'consumer tech', I don't only think of social media, internet search, and media/content sites. It is true that people spend a lot of time on those sites, and many of them rely on advertising revenue to support themselves (sometimes exclusively, sometimes partially). When I think of consumer tech, I think of it more broadly[1], and the larger stack. One example part of that stack is hardware and physical devices, which are required for anyone to even access such sites. We wouldn't 'always be connected' if not for advances in mobile/hardware. To touch on the slippery concept of 'if ad-supported services use paid-for services, they are effectively ad-supported then': this is a weird take and word game to play. Why stop there? Where does the ad revenue come from? Advertisers. Where do the advertisers money come from to pay for ads? Mostly not ads themselves, but from a host of different revenue models. So using this logic, ad-supported services are effectively a bunch of different revenue models? (so could one then hand-wave away the ad revenue model altogether?) [1]" https://builtin.com/consumer-tech https://builtin.com/consumer-tech