What would the internet without ads have evolved into?

PianoPlayer88Key · February 18, 2022

I remember in the mid 1990s to early 2000s or so, in the first several years I was on the internet (starting about mid teens, was born spring 1981), dreaming of the day when everything that would ever be on the internet would be free (no fees), without ads, etc. (Some of the details, I've thought of more recently.)

Of course physical goods shipped to you would have their normal cost, as well as paying people who do service work, like hiring a mechanic or contractor over the internet, or commissioning a piece of art for example.

The cost of content (any content) would be covered by the flat monthly fee you pay your ISP. (Also you could download and keep anything you wanted, forever.) Data caps would be banned, and also upload speeds couldn't be slower than download speeds. The more you pay, the faster your connection is, with the fastest service being faster than the speed of your local main storage drives (for example hard drives in the early days, SATA SSDs in the early 2000s, NVMe SSDs today).

Also if you could pay a certain amount at one time, like maybe 2 or 3 years or so, you would get lifetime service & content for that one-time larger fee. (YOUR lifetime, not the ISP's lifetime. If you're older, like 60+, it would maybe be 33% or 50% off for the lifetime subscription. Also it would be transferable to other ISPs, but you couldn't pass it on to your children when you die, although I wish there was a way to allow that.)