I’ve been using the web for as long as it has been publicly available (1993), and I remember ads were always a thing. Hell, it used to be a lot worse.
I too started using the web back in summer of 93 NCSA What’s New era. At that time, the idea was that if a company just put a web page up that was their ad, but the most exciting parts were people just putting up information for free. Link ads and banner ads started in 1994 but they weren’t too bad. Pop-up ads started in 1997. They were pretty bad, but most browsers got popup blockers pretty quickly (especially Netscape Navigator iirc.) Adblock 0.1 was written in 2002 and the cat-and-mouse started. But generally the web was a great place to get information. Then the social media companies came forth with false gifts, speaking lies.
I too started using the web back in summer of 93 NCSA What’s New era. At that time, the idea was that if a company just put a web page up that was their ad, but the most exciting parts were people just putting up information for free. Link ads and banner ads started in 1994 but they weren’t too bad. Pop-up ads started in 1997. They were pretty bad, but most browsers got popup blockers pretty quickly (especially Netscape Navigator iirc.) Adblock 0.1 was written in 2002 and the cat-and-mouse started. But generally the web was a great place to get information. Then the social media companies came forth with false gifts, speaking lies.