> So I feel pretty confident in stating that it's either gonna be ads or payments.

I'm assuming you mean exclusive disjunction here, but in reality it's something closer to a conjunction, if not occasionally an inclusive disjunction. So many subscription services also have ads and if they don't, they eventually do.

The problem isn't that people want things for free; hell, we all pay for access to the internet already. The problem is a shit-ton of monied interests want to squeeze every possible dollar from people always. So we're slammed with ads and our behavior is manipulated and tracked and monetized and sold.

This was not how things were on the internet or the web in mid 90s. It was not the ethos then, but it became the ethos when monied interests took over.

Someone who is willing to pay for a service is also an extremely desirable person to show advertisements to. You've just demonstrated you have disposable income.

> we all pay for access to the internet already

That will cover the physical infrastructure of your Internet provider. But there are a lot of websites and software on the internet that require either ads or payment to survive. Free usually means "surviving with somebody else's money aka investors"