Maybe not the entire Internet but certainly the Web is an advertising machine. People are often berated "How dare you block ads" in your browser taking money away from websites. As if ads were the sole purpose for anything to exist. Even if you do block ads your mere existence as a user is valuable data so I'm not sorry for blocking every advertisement I can.
In the early days of the Web or even just the public Internet in general the Ineternet was an infrequent pastime. If nobody was using the one telephone your entire family owned you could surf the Web, maybe. Even then you only used your dial-up account to briefly use some of your limited hours per month. Most of the time people with computers were offline.
From my point of view advertising has really ruined the Web and the Web itself has made people less computer literate. People use maybe a half dozen websites and that's it most probably use a tablet. I know back when I had my first PC in the early 1990s you had to be much more aware of configuring it. That wasn't a bad thing it really meant you learned about how the computer and OS worked. Being aware of its operation meant you were able to fix it, and your data wasn't stored anywhere but your PC locally at best on a floppy, or dozen.
I know people would counter with the "free" services we use like webmail, streaming video, search engines. I'd pay for it if they were cheap enough but even then your information would be right back in the hands of a large corporation.
It's to the point now where the Internet is vital for government services. If anything governments are going to have to offer cheap (or "free") Internet access, email, and other basics.
In the early days of the Web or even just the public Internet in general the Ineternet was an infrequent pastime. If nobody was using the one telephone your entire family owned you could surf the Web, maybe. Even then you only used your dial-up account to briefly use some of your limited hours per month. Most of the time people with computers were offline.
From my point of view advertising has really ruined the Web and the Web itself has made people less computer literate. People use maybe a half dozen websites and that's it most probably use a tablet. I know back when I had my first PC in the early 1990s you had to be much more aware of configuring it. That wasn't a bad thing it really meant you learned about how the computer and OS worked. Being aware of its operation meant you were able to fix it, and your data wasn't stored anywhere but your PC locally at best on a floppy, or dozen.
I know people would counter with the "free" services we use like webmail, streaming video, search engines. I'd pay for it if they were cheap enough but even then your information would be right back in the hands of a large corporation.
It's to the point now where the Internet is vital for government services. If anything governments are going to have to offer cheap (or "free") Internet access, email, and other basics.