[account42]

> if everyone did that, there would be almost no more free websites

Wrong.

Let's ignore for the moment that ad-funded websites are not free but only pretend to be free (the average user pays eventually, otherwise ads would not make sense for the advertiser), non-commercial websites have existed longer than ad-funded ones. If anything, making "free" profitable invites profiteers that produce mediocre content but know how to out-SEO genuine free websites.

> So much of the internet is paid for through ads.

And the best thing for the Internet is if that part came crashing down. But even for the ad-supported part of the web, almost all of the actual content is generated by unpaid users.