Remove ads in 'real life'?

Another Friday, another Dabbsy article on El Reg.

For years I've heard the objection to the wearing of branded clothes, about people becoming walking advertisements, but it's never bothered me. I see no cache in branding (no woman ever approached me in the street and asked to have my babies because I wore Adidas trainers or Levi Strauss jeans) though I know for some it can make a difference *for them*. I think I've removed brand names a couple of times, but usually because they were a) embarrassingly naff, but even more b) simply large and ugly.

No, the big objection to online ads is that it simply fills the space one withes to view with garbage and consumes available bandwidth and processor cycles.  I like the idea of paying some kind of small subscription in order to view pages ad-free (I'm going to block those ads anyway, so you get NO revenue otherwise) but it's hard to envision how such a system might be managed? Could it be like royalties for music? Probably not a great idea, since the rich b*st*rds who already run the music streaming systems will cream off most of the money instead of giving it to the people actually making it. I know they guys who started the Brave browser were looking at something, but that's gone quiet recently.

There has to be a better system than the non-system presently operated, but it would need to work across borders and legislatures, and it's hard to see how that might pan out, especially given the moronic rush for everything to be free in terms of cash transfer, but expensive in terms of energy, efficiency and giving away of data.

Perhaps the (in)famous GDPR will help?