Paying with personal data/advertising is an illusion. People who buy ads or buy your personal data don't do so out of the goodness of their hearts. They do so

Paying with personal data/advertising is an illusion. People who buy ads or buy your personal data don't do so out of the goodness of their hearts. They do so in order to make up not only the cost of buying the ad/data in the first place but extract more money out of you, one way or another. This means it should always be cheaper to just pay for the service yourself then "pay" via ads or exploitation of your personal data, since the latter involves more middlemen that want their cut. The fact that poor people can currently "freeload" off the system is an artifact of imperfect targeting rather than intentional generosity on the advertisers' part to subsidize the poor population, and will be quickly closed off the second there will be a way to reliably distinguish the purchasing power of a user as to deny service to those whose ad views aren't profitable enough (as they would never be able to purchase the advertised products).