The crux of the Ethan Zuckerman problem boils down to should the monetization of the internet come from direct purchase or indirect revenue streams? Ethan Zuckerman was the creator of the pop-up ad, and his answer was the latter–in the form of pop-up ads. Although this ushered in an era of annoyance and ultimately an industry of usurpation of human behavior, I think it is better than the former approach of monetization, but its effects can be mitigated.
Firstly, it is clear that the internet must be monetized. Nothing in life is free, least enough access to all the information you could possibly want. By adding paywalls to every site, intellectual curiosity would flag, and the fiscal gap between social communities would widen (since not all would be able to afford perusing the internet). Another revenue strategy could be Wikipedia’s, where the site’s maintainers beg its users for money. Ask yourself, how many milliseconds have you spent considering to donate to such a helpful cause. The answer to using advertisement is a simple and harmless solution at face value.
The advertisement industry on the internet is still an active warzone, where now the antagonists are Meta and Apple instead of Tripod.com and GeoCities. Users are now seen as numbers, specifically dollar signs, and sometimes I admit, by the usefulness of advertisements shown me, I am happy to be a number. There is good in being shown objects and events relevant to your situation. The fault comes when the business model no longer is motivated by the original problem but by the lure of easy riches from advertising. To mitigate hurtful impacts, ethics should be applied to what is being advertised and how often, such that the user is treated as the website founder would treat their mother, husband, or daughter.
