the longer you spend using software that does not make deliberate efforts to run your inner peace through a wood chipper in order to monetize it

the more jarring it is using something that does

when commercial OSes insist on putting the weather on the lock screen whether we ask for it or not, that is the company advertising its own services to us, that is the company clamoring for our attention and telling us we need to be thinking about the weather rather than just quietly existing
people who are used to putting up with that one don't even recognize it as an intrusion, and when we call it an "advertisement" without explanation, people are confused. that's fair enough, but from outside, from a baseline position of not giving up any of our internal calm and quiet to external corporate demands for it, it stands out, it's obvious

we do suspect that our actions on this topic come off as extreme, but, like

we do not use things that have ads in them. it is not worth it to us. it's just completely not worth it, there is no way that it is ever going to be an experience we're glad to have had. we're glad that it's not a big deal to other people, but we have the self respect and self awareness that it is a big deal to us

@ireneista There are two valid courses of action when presented with an ad:

1) Leave, stop using the service/tool

2) Find a way to make the ad go away

Which I pick depends on how difficult option 2 is, and how important the service is to me.

@azonenberg yes, exactly

again, we want to be clear we're not judging people for their choices here, but that's the way we see it for ourselves, for our own goals

@ireneista Yeah my point is, I don't tolerate ads but I'm OK with using the service if it's the only viable option *and* I can make the ad go away somehow.

But like, for example, if YT anti-adblock gets bad for a while I'll just stop using it until ublock catches up.

@azonenberg yep, that makes sense for sure, and we're on the same page
@ireneista (to clarify for anyone else reading this, there is explicitly no third "watch the ad" option)

@ireneista I've always seen advertising as an attack on bodily autonomy. You're trying to reach your filthy money-grabbing hands into my most private of all spaces, the inside of my head.

And I reject such advances in the strongest possible way.