When users demand free services from Internet companies, advertising is practically the only legal way for these companies to stay in business and make a profit. Since the Internet is dominated by free services and content, advertising is omnipresent, even though people rarely like advertisements on their screens.
Our thirst for free has made advertising ubiquitous, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. The price of an ad-supported Internet is unimaginably high when we think of the climate and environmental crisis, because for a sustainable world we need to drastically reduce our consumption of energy and materials, but most advertising encourages overconsumption.
We need new ways to fund a free Internet without advertising. Voluntary payments, for example, allow everyone to decide how valuable an intellectual work is, and then voluntarily pay for valuable works, so that good creators and businesses are compensated for their quality content and useful services. Voluntary payments have two reasons for replacing advertising.
Firstly, voluntary payment is much better at promoting quality content and rewarding good creators than advertising. Advertising usually favors click-bait content and rewards those who can display ads on people's screens. That's why most websites are littered with distracting ads and our mailbox is full of SPAM emails. Voluntary payments work like a democratic system. People vote with their wallets for quality content. Our voluntary payment for any intellectual work can be used to determine its value and provide value-based compensation to creators. Since we only pay for valuable works, worthless works will gradually disappear without people's financial support.
Secondly, voluntary payment is more sustainable than advertising. Advertising generally promotes material production and consumption, leading to environmental pollution and destruction, while voluntary payments promote intellectual creation and appreciation, shifting our pursuit of happiness from material to intelligent growth.
