> Also, if you occupy a niche and run it well, you can make internet money the old fashioned way, by finding products that your niche users specifically want and organically selling to them without ad spamming them to death.

Yes, that's usually how it starts. It ends with invisible tracking pixels and flashing X10 ads everywhere. That or stealth ads disguised as content.

This isn't some hypothetical. We have 30 years of history now to tell us exactly how this plays out.

> Just like forums used to do.

That era was great while it lasted. But since the "adpocalypse", it's very very difficult for sites to make money without targeted ads and the requisite tracking. We lost a lot of high-quality sites like Dr Dobbs Journal in the adpocalypse, and all we have to replace them are SEO content farms and blogspam.