[apercu]

"Back then, the minor inconvenience of seeing a few ads seemed worth all the benefits of access all the internet had to offer"

Yes and no. I complained about ads to a partner back in 1999. He seemed surprised, and said something to the effect of "well that's how the content you are consuming is paid for".

My argument (25 years ago now) was that it wasn't the ads as much as it was the ads blocking content, slowing the page load, being intrusive, etc.

So, even "Back Then" it was an issue. Now, it's on steroids with all the aforementioned behaviours being even worse now (e.g., reload an entire page on mobile in order to load a new ad, pages jumping around as new ads are loaded, more pop-ups, etc.) but exacerbated by the privacy nightmare of weaponized data collection.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I just think the underlying issues were evident very early in the "www" environment.