I would be more sympathetic to your worldview if the quality of the free services online weren't clearly lowered to service ad views.
Just think how useful google could be if you could filter out commercial results, or import a domain blocklist, or control the ranking algorithm.
Think how usable social media would be if it weren't a way to turn money into "engagement".
Think how much better news sites would be if journalists weren't dependent on wealthy patrons who have the power to withdraw their funding when they perceive bad or unfair coverage.
The illusion of a service being "free", without giving the user any power to actually dictate what makes a service high or low quality, is ultimately just lowering the bar on what the role of technology should be—it's not just a machine for a small portion of society to have "passive income".
Think of how small and untransformative Google would be if only middle and upper class people afforded or bothered to pay for it because it charged a fee for its sophisticated services.
Think how useless social media would be if it primarily connected together wealthy individuals that can pay the upkeep needed to operate a sophisticated global network while those who most need a voice cannot.
Think of how much worse society would be if news required an unpopularly high ad-free fee which meant that the best news organizations catered first and foremost to wealthy and already-educated patrons.
The illusion of a service being "ad-free", without serving the broad but lower class foundation of society, would ultimately just destroy the impact and democratizing power of technology. It's not just a machine for a small portion of wealthy, educated Hacker News elites to pay and keep for themselves.
Advertising influence is surely not all positive, but there is no silver bullet here, and I would consider the wet dream of those who want to get rid of advertising without a practical substitute to be a massive regression. I consider the alignment of profits with breadth of access to be one of the biggest engines of progress in the modern age. A poor child in Detroit and a simple mother in a third world country use the same web browser and internet as the most powerful political leaders and heads of industry. That's the world I want to live in.
Nationalizing the service would destroy its usefulness. The public sector has its advantages but creativity, technological innovation, and good UX are not among them.
Well put but hindsight being 20/20, it might have been nice to know before hand that the price of letting a 'poor child in Detroit' have accessible browsing was the relentless and pernicious invasion of privacy that 'free' internet provides. More importantly, all those examples you presented seem like what happens now in slightly obvious forms e.g. blue checkmarks, newspaper paywalls etc.
Just think how useful google could be if you could filter out commercial results, or import a domain blocklist, or control the ranking algorithm.
Think how usable social media would be if it weren't a way to turn money into "engagement".
Think how much better news sites would be if journalists weren't dependent on wealthy patrons who have the power to withdraw their funding when they perceive bad or unfair coverage.
The illusion of a service being "free", without giving the user any power to actually dictate what makes a service high or low quality, is ultimately just lowering the bar on what the role of technology should be—it's not just a machine for a small portion of society to have "passive income".