I do not like to blame someone but the major issue I see is not that we got such system, the major issue is that we have not much alternatives. The ones we already got have a history of abuse…

• Crypto background mining, The PirateBay did this in the past, you could set an amount of CPU power to mine for them, the idea might be good but without any control the abuse level is too high. People use such system today to mine coins to make cash, mostly in malware apps.
• Traditional ads, for lots of people annoying. The thing is most system do not place ads very well and they tend to be then annoying. I would not mind to see an Lemmy ad here and then to useful new posts.
• Crypto. Some people like it, others do not, same like donations most average users maybe do it once, maybe twice and that is it, so at the end you need constantly to beg for donations or and crypto which then is like an traditional ad, annoying. See the HUGE Wikipedia banner each year.

So the issue I see is that we have only handful alternatives, and all of them have downsides. No one ever came up with another solution, and this is what we get now.

I think in an ideal world, the government should have to fund this…

I partially agree here. My idea was that crypto becomes mainstream and that your bank and or the govt regulates crypto in general, bans mining and provide us with basically a crypto PayPal system, but more private and climate neutral. However, this is sadly not the case.

I get your logic but I know lots of people reject the idea of giving the govt. more control over things, we also have a history of abuse here.

Personally I say we need better alternatives + the banking systems + govt and the user should get a better and more up2date banking system which also allows some sort of micro-donation system. It would be easy if you just setup in your normal bank account a fund for project x and then control your micro-transactions, so you only have to trust your bank, which you anyway already do because you have your normal bank account there + the govt would be happy because they might still see transactions or your bank needs to report things like fraud, yearly reports etc.

But this hits now a bit off-topic. My main points are that current systems suck and that the crypto problem is not solved and because of this we see - sadly - traditional ads systems, once again.