But, I can say this much. I was getting tired of seeing constant pop-ups and advertisements on other OSes (Have you tried the new Safari?), so I bit the bullet and switched to a full-on desktop Linux rig about 3 years ago. It has it's ups and downs, which are worth talking about in a separate context, but one of the most jarring things is how it invokes a strange feeling of solitude. Updates are at-will. News apps don't come pre-installed. You don't even need a browser to install your software. There's an uncanny emotion that I get from using Linux, even 36 months later, where I'm really just alone with my system. I like the feeling, it reminds me of being alone with a good book and a pad of paper, but I can really do anything I want. I'm not sure other people would like it, though. Today's youth are growing up dependent on an attention economy for better and worse, so I bet they'd happily trade in that feeling of anomie for a gaming laptop or brand-new Macbook.
In a lot of ways, that's what I think would happen with an ad-free internet. The barrel of safe, healthy browsing has gone over the waterfall. We're in a post-internet world, and removing the ads from our browsing experience would probably just confuse the majority of users, leaving them potentially even more vulnerable than they are now. It's a toss-up.
So, to sum up my answer to your question, broker-free internet would be better.
I am mixed on brokers/tracking. I think the worry is overblown. When I talk to friends in the industry they laugh at how bad it all works. From what I see it is more like pointing a shotgun in a dark room the size of a football stadium. I would rather have more targeted ads personally.
In my mind it would undoubtedly be _better_. Sure there will be downsides, but not constantly having to spend brain power considering the proposals in Ads is pretty great.
Decision fatigue is a real thing.
From a user perspective I can confirm that the internet and life generally is good without advertisements.
maybe some sort of collective billing happens, but if not, every site that needs revenue has a paywall somewhere, and they're all going to have to deal with the billing process, chargeback, fraud, account recovery, etc. That's a lot more work than dropping in a bit of javascript here and there or an iframe or whatever, and getting a payment from one entity.
Most ad supported sites are open to the world, even though large parts of the world doesn't make significant revenue from ads. If it's a paywall, those parts of the world probably can't pay, and miss out; whether that's because they can't afford it or because international payment is difficult and not worth the pain to get working for a small number of customers.
On the other hand, if it's the magic happy land where ads disappear and sites still otherwise work, yeah, that'd be great, but unrealistic.