On the downside, some deep pocketed businesses subsidize everyone else's content consumption in exchange for some of their attention. That's not the most impor

On the downside, some deep pocketed businesses subsidize everyone else's content consumption in exchange for some of their attention. That's not the most important downside by far. The downside is that the fabric of the web and the content on it is distorted by the drive to gain views and clicks, at whatever cost, because of a purely advert drive model. Adverts migrate to the positions with the most exposure, editorial content gets thinner and thinner until it represents the minimum effort required to gain views, titles become clickbait, journalism becomes churnalism, advertorial becomes prominent, product placement becomes the norm. There are very real downsides to the ad supported model, so if you are going to argue for a transaction free web, recognise what you are giving away - it certainly isn't just a little bit of your attention now and then. Perhaps there are ways to address those pernicious downsides to the advert-driven model and moderate its effects, but those effects are currently distorting a lot of the content on the web to make it less informative, less engaging, and less interesting than the ads it lives to serve.