Most of the websites I would want to see most are smaller and hosted and maintained by individuals or small groups.
People already pay for things like Kagi to try to get out from under the mountains of SEO adspam. I have to pay in time and aggravation to stay sane in the face of ever escalating tactics to shove ads in my face and manipulate my online behavior. So I don't think a smaller web would be a bad thing.
But I don't see that as likely to happen anyway; companies have found out that advertising and data harvesting is far more profitable, and governments have found the same to be very useful for exercising control.
People already pay for things like Kagi to try to get out from under the mountains of SEO adspam. I have to pay in time and aggravation to stay sane in the face of ever escalating tactics to shove ads in my face and manipulate my online behavior. So I don't think a smaller web would be a bad thing.
But I don't see that as likely to happen anyway; companies have found out that advertising and data harvesting is far more profitable, and governments have found the same to be very useful for exercising control.