i don’t defend targeted ads since they are bad (i use uBlock)
but what monetization system is a bit more ethical than targeted ads but can last unlike donations
how would you solve that issue
My Opinion
well it is make that there are version which you own but if you pay for 1 the one after it you pay again for that new version but with a small discount


Yeah, subscriptions and donations would have to be more than what is now. But distributed and federated systems and not chasing profitability at corporations would go a long way to running systems. Lemmy for example can be an alternative to Reddit while running off of hobbyist and donarion run servers. Gmail probably costs a fortune but what about 100,000 small independent email servers taking its place? Email is already a federated system. And then there’s self hosting. I bought a second hand computer and run the equivalent of Google Photos for myself and others on it for very cheap. Putting all these together, and if these were the default and more supported, the infrastructure costs can be spread thin.