>How about this: you have a business that sells stuff online and but then a buyer suddenly refuses to give you money in return and says "I don't like money as it has corrupting power. I prefer an alternative means of compensation but can't think of any but it doesn't mean it cannot exist. Since you have a profitable business it's on you to find the alternative payment that I like".

I don't think I understand your complete train of thought here, but...

>then a buyer suddenly refuses to give you money in return [...]

In return? In this scenario does this customer receive your product before paying for it?

If the customer refuses to pay for a thing you sell, they simply do not get that thing.

> They're trying to pay the consumer BAT tokens for consuming.

Not quite. Publishers are paid in BAT by consumers that choose to do so. Consumers can earn BAT by watching ads, or by purchasing it directly and (hopefully?) avoiding ads. See [1].

I haven't tried it myself, and it's had its share of controversy[2], so it's not a perfect implementation, but certainly a prototype of more user respecting business model.

The idea is that the transaction should be a conscious decision initiated by the user. Not something that is forced upon them by stealing their attention from the content they're actually interested in to focus on product placements that might be--but often are not--relevant to their interests. Then you add the intrusive UI changes some sites adopt to show ads, the pervasive tracking and shady practices, and I can't understand how someone outside of the advertising industry would defend it.

The solution is not smarter and more relevant interests ads, nor simple text based "promise, no tracking" ads. The solution is a reversal of the business model and putting the user in charge of how, what they pay with, and to whom. You know, like it works in the real world when you purchase something. Yes, this would be a financial hit to a lot of companies and the advertising industry, but it seems like a good alternative to these hostile practices that are ruining the internet. What with the constant cookie consent forms and pervasive advertising the web has become increasingly annoying and hostile to use. We should fight to fix that.

For all its shortcomings Brave Inc. is attempting to change this, and we should applaud and promote that. Unfortunately unless the big tech firms adopt similar models, this is unlikely to have mass adoption. And like I said, they have no incentives to do so.

As for answering your question, I'm not paid to come up with user respecting business models for companies. :) But off the top of my head, they could try donations, merchandise, "pro" subscription plans (free for everyone, advanced features for paying users; just don't be crippleware/nagware), or an entirely paid-only model. Yes, it wouldn't be as lucrative and "easy" as ads, but there doesn't have to be a single source of revenue.

[1]: https://basicattentiontoken.org/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...