this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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So, instead, they should cater to an industry that has long been a known vector for malware, abuse, and PII theft?
that is the only current accepted alternative to paying for website access, yes
if you have better ideas though, we'd all love to hear them
Your stance appears to be roughly "we've tried nothing and are all out of ideas, so let's keep doing objectively harmful things".
The simplest idea is not to accept the premise that an objectively harmful business model that only brings value to a shrinking minority is acceptable. Maybe commercialism of every part of the web isn't something that humanity needs. As for paying for access, there are plenty of extant models that have never been attempted with any seriousness.
Then again, the whole Linux ecosystem is able to thrive without bending the knee to the ad industry. There's no reason that a web browser cannot also thrive without ads except for a lack of desire to do so.
Maybe if people/browser makers didn't bend over to this nonsense, the websites would figure it out. You know, the people who's problem that is (because yes, if you run a website and want to make money off it, that's your problem to fix not mine, and it's certainly not my job to cater to it).