Advertisers are essentially subsidizing many businesses. Costs are higher than you think and most products we enjoy are expensive.

Yes, there is FOSS, but you’re essentially fucking lucky that people that work on those want to do this from the passion they have. Most people don’t, and won’t, do shit like that for free. Hell, look at many here on the internet that want products for free and are unwilling to pay or even do minimal donations for things that they already like.

Like it or not, most people want to be fucking paid for their time and FOSS, as great as it can be, is not the norm for most talent. We can make counter arguments and hate on capitalism, but that is the reality, and until entire cultures change then this is what it is and advertisers are sort of necessary evil in most cases.

Few online platforms flourish without advertisers. Practically all our content on lemmy comes from sites with advertising.

Maybe advertisers are bots too?

Yes because people are cheap.

Literally everything on the internet is paid for by advertising. And without it every site you rely upon will either become a subscription service or simply disappear because it is expensive to run a website.