Hot take, but I blame 90% of these problems on the internet's overreliance on funding from advertisement. It all flows from there: 1. To display ads is to sacr

Hot take, but I blame 90% of these problems on the internet's overreliance on funding from advertisement. It all flows from there: 1. To display ads is to sacrifice user experience. This is a slippery slope and both developers and users get used to it, which affects even ad-free services. Things like "yes/maybe later" become normal. 2. Ads are only displayed when the user visits the service directly. Therefore we cannot have open APIs, federation, alternative clients, or user customization. 3. The advertisement infrastructure is expensive. This has to be paid with more ads. Like the rocket equation, this eventually plateaus, but by then the software is bloated and cannot be funded traditionally anymore, so any dips are fatal. Constant churn. 4. Well targeted ads are marginally more profitable, therefore all user information is valuable. Cue an entire era of tracking, privacy violations, and psychological manipulation. 5. Advertiser don't want to be associated with anything remotely controversial, so the circle of acceptable content shrinks every year. The fringes become worse and worse. 6. The system only works with a very large number of users. It becomes socially expected to participate, and at the same time, no customer support is provided when things go wrong. I'm fairly sure ads are our generation's asbestos or leaded gasoline, and would be disappointed if they are not largely banned in the future.