There can be nothing between apple and the iron grip on it’s users.

Not always. Believe it or not it used to be kinda like it is now, here.

With the technical barriers to entry pre AOL the people online were outcasts, nerds, and science departments at universities. The ad driven model is the attempt to lower barriers of entry make profit of that and not the other way around. Lots of the Internet ran on generosity and donations.

It’s been shittier every day after there was an agreement on how to monetize though. The people at the start didn’t ever have the guarantee it would get adopted, so for all the idealism we deal with their compromises.