It was a distributed way to fund media instead of banner ads. I think it would have been a tough sell, but imagine if all the 30% stakes that PayPal, Apple, Patreon, take were direct to creators?
This of course would all depend on a reliable search engine that could actually find things worth supporting.
Instead we had Geocities and Live Journal jamming ads all over to make it a “free” service, until it wasn’t. Now we have Google, TikTok and Facebook to replace them but that could turn it all off whenever they want.