There’s no winning a war against ads. There are too many people who can’t or won’t pay for services directly, and there are too many people looking to promote products or viewpoints who’ll keep offering money to anyone with an audience.
What I’d like would be focusing on the downsides: ad networks should have legal restrictions on how they collect and share data, liability for any malware they distribute, and every ad should include the legal identity of the person who paid for them (which the network is required to certify). When sites see ads as free money, they plaster them everywhere. When they have to think about the negative externalities, that becomes a more nuanced decision than “would we like more money?”
We have legal restrictions now.
Companies just figured out that they would show a form with buttons: "Accept All", "Accept essential". And said tracking cookies are now "essential". I don't believe "Accept essential" would not share your data - so, just using as privacy oriented browser as possible is the only solution.
Youtube is full of clickbait, get rich quick and unhealthy influencers (how to work 80 hours a week and buy my book btw). Same with fb/ig.
That’s kind of what I’m saying: we don’t keep our houses at semiconductor fab-levels of clean because it’s not worth the extra effort. I think the same is true of ads for most people: minimize the security risk, set some privacy rules, and don’t make them too obtrusive, and most people are fine with it.
What I’d like would be focusing on the downsides: ad networks should have legal restrictions on how they collect and share data, liability for any malware they distribute, and every ad should include the legal identity of the person who paid for them (which the network is required to certify). When sites see ads as free money, they plaster them everywhere. When they have to think about the negative externalities, that becomes a more nuanced decision than “would we like more money?”