I personally wouldn't mind ads, if they weren't too obtuse and/or malware ridden.
I often turn off the adblocker for independent news sites, as theirs are less obtuse and are vetted better than just running an AI to detect nudity and/or slurs.
By all means bring back the banner and side ads that are just one banner and a couple of side ads. Breaking every paragraph up by two more ads is just a miserable experience. Have you tried to look up a recipe lately? Trying to find a recipe without an ad blocker pisses me off and off that I just give up on the recipe. Even though I know it's on the page, between the 5,000 word essay trying to convey their nostalgia for the recipe and the 27 different ads that break that 5,000 word essay into 25 pages, I'd rather DDOS them then get the recipe from them.
There comes a point where one realizes that those around you cannot be relied upon to leverage solutions. Psychopaths get ahead because they're willing to play dirty. So much of the world can be summed up as large swaths of population being induced to behave or think certain ways by psychopathic manipulators.