[bigbugbag]

I'm pretty sure you are mistaken, Internet before ads was useful, internet without ads would be faster, more secure and less surveillance/tracking. A major improvement in usefulness.

I'm using ublock origins as my adblocker and there is no such whitelist scheme, it seems that you are generalizing eyeo's adblock plus to all ad blockers which is nothing like what happens in the real world. Don't want to be leveraged by a german company to get money from advertisers ? use ublock origins.

BTW what eyeo is trying to achieve with their whitelisting is what you are asking for: acceptable ads and behavior from the advertising companies.

IMHO the only way out is by making ads less profitable so they will just cease to be the business model to go to. This means the largest ads company will probably stop being a competitor which provides product and services for free.

[touristtam]

There is still the issue of founding for companies that decide to try and publish on the internet. This has been the issue for newspaper for a few decades now. Less money injected in this market == less actors.