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Well yes, nobody likes ads. But think of it this way - ads are "democratic" in a way, because it means everybody can "afford" or access that which is financed by the ads. Most websites are expensive to run and have to make money somehow to pay for itself - as much as I dislike ads, I'm not sure what the alternative would be? Should we have to pay to access each and every website? I don't know what the best solution would be, to be hones.
Ads have nothing to do with democracy; they are forced upon us and serve no other purpose than to manipulate you into buying a product. That's text-book capitalism for you.
Personally, as an open-source developer, I use crowd-funding to cover the expenses for the websites and software I provide. You will find no ads or tracking on my pages, and the same can be said for the majority of open-source projects.
The problem is rarely tied to cost; usually, it's about greed and the never-ending chase for higher profit margins.
Mind you, I'm just a single individual with a single experience, but if I can find a way to get paid for my work without forcing people to watch the visual diarrhea, so can the giants like Google.
YouTube only barely breaks even as it is. What profit margins are you talking about?
In Q3 of 2022 alone, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, recorded a profit (not revenue!) of 13.9 billion USD. Their financial position is more than secure.
https://abc.xyz/assets/investor/static/pdf/2022Q3_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=4156e7f