[Nextgrid]

Street crime & bank robbery became a terrible business model because as a society we agree that this kind of crime needs to be stopped/deterred and implemented mitigations (such as making it harder to resell stolen goods, requiring extra documentation for large cash-based transactions, etc).

There's no reason the same couldn't apply to advertising. We could implement (and actually enforce - so unlike the GDPR for example) privacy regulations that would make ad tracking more transparent and give consumers a choice, or repealing Section 230 protections for platforms that take on an publisher role by prioritizing certain content to generate "engagement". These would make advertising less lucrative and let other business models take over.