I have nothing against ads in principle. Anyone who offers a service such as a useful website should of course be rewarded for it.
What I am against is intrusiveness and tracking. If advertising were just simple locally served banners in the sidebars of the website without any tracking, as it used to be, I would have no problem with it.
Exactly. To let advertisers intrude on your brain for what you get in exchange is usually an unfair bargain. People really undervalue their attention and time.
Not to mention ads have been caught being straight up malware and phishing without any real vetting on behalf of the ad companies. Malware has even gotten to the top of Google search results just by buying an ad slot they didn’t vet. It’s become a legitimate and serious security concern.
In the same way that a year ago I watched YouTube with ads. I’m not watching with ads if it’s even close to the same amount of ad as video
I literally subbed to a podcast using the RSS, and they feed ads through like most podcasts do these days. It started with two ads, ok fine that’s not too bad. It plays the podcast for 8:50ish, and then drops, not “another,” but four ads. It very well may have been more than four too, but during the fourth (sixth total) I stopped the podcast and unsubbed. Not only were there all those ads, but part of the actual eight whole minutes the hosts talked was them plugging their patreon.
None of this was hyperbole, and I remember it well as it happened yesterday.