PornHub served up malware in ads for a year undetected

The well of consumer trust has been poisoned by companies that saw the web as a Wild West platform where they could make money without bothering with ethics or standards, but now users are aware that all of those malignant and annoying ads can easily be blocked, and companies are getting desperate as they realize all too late that they were participating in an honor system in which they had far less power than they wanted.

Why would we surrender and pay the Danegeld when we're clearly winning the war?

The cost of course is that we are forever bombarded with advertisement that tries to coerce and trick us into buying some shit that we don’t need or want, or we have to see even more misleading or downright fraudulent bullshit and put up with ever-worse clickbait articles and websites. Which causes more and more people to block adverts.

Personally, I’ve never paid for a site or app to remove their adverts, but I often pay for stuff that’s advert-free (but not cost-free) to begin with. I also like to directly back content creators whose content I enjoy through patreon.

History has a tendency to repeat itself. Advertisement in email is today almost dead, where everyone has filters and blocks to prevent the flood of illicit actors. Telling people to "open your wallet/purse" is not the solution to spam, malware, scams, and fraudulent advertisement. Nothing short of a major rework of international law has any chance of putting that genie back in the bottle and turning back time. Its unlikely, so we all have to resort to blocks and filters to do the jobs for which normally governments and police do.