The "evil ads" argument doesn't even look really thought through to me. The way I look at it, there's 3 options:

1. Do everything for free. Rarely tenable.

2. Charge for things. This necessarily puts focus of business on monetization, or at the very least, it frequently pits providing and extracting value at odds.

3. Delegate monetization (a.k.a. ads). Then you can just focus on providing maximum value to your customers and money scales proportionally.

As a builder of things who's not greedy, #3 sounds like positively best option, if it's financially viable and product type makes it possible.