> There is no free internet without ads.

of course there is. Because there was. It existed. Eventually we got banner ads. It just got worse after that. People ran their own servers, so did companies. They paid to have their own content online for whatever reason they wished. And often you would get cut off, "so and so's website can only serve 200 requests a day, come back tomorrow." My server runs ad free for no other reason than I want it there with some of my content. Ads enabled a bigger internet and "content creators" who work full time growing the internet. The internet was just fine without these professional content creators.