I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

Part of the problem is a lack of a feedback channel that pushes back against the worst tranche of ads. It is one of these situations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty_Model

where you have no "Voice".

At home we were talking about food ads on Youtube. Sure, once in a while you see an ad for a meal box that is actual food but I see a lot of ads for things like Huel which float in this strange space where it's not "I used to eat bread and meat and vegetables and now I drink all my meals" but where it's normal to drink your meals (they pose as if they were trying to persuade you to switch from some other meal replacement), where you have to work just as hard taking supplements every day as you would work lifting weights or not eating junk food -- there's McDonald's and there are ultra-processed foods, but this is ridiculous.

(A friend of mine received a huge quantity of 4Patriots dried food from his mom who was sucked in by some ad that claimed it was on sale because they made too much. We got some and the smell when my son made it turned my stomach.)

In terms of sponsorships there was the "Established Titles" scandal; I am a big fan of Ryan Szymanski who's a world authority on battleships. One day he got bribed to make a video about

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapa_Flow

which was a good reason to talk about battleships and Scotland. Pretty soon he's adding a cringy pitch to all his videos and unfortunately it is so hard to give somebody like the right kind of "tough love" which will set him straight, although after the scandal popped most of the people involved went back to remove the junk.

maybe my rant is going to be a bit out of place here but here it goes anyways:

sometimes im glad im a technical person that can get away with a somewhat "healthy digital life" im basically immune to all the crap going on. i don't need to work too hard to meet my digital needs because im also a simple person. but i really feel bad for the normies who have to deal with all the shit the tech industry throws at them. they don't even know what's wrong, they can't pinpoint what's giving them that extra stress, building up day by day when they use their devices, handle their info, or consume entertainment. like account exhaustion, confusing UI changes every day, or why they have to navigate a sea of crap just to unsubscribe. and why do they need a new computer for software that worked fine 15 years ago? and don't even get me started on what they're doing to older people. cable companies for example are ripping them off with terrible TV boxes and nonsense plans. all their appliances need subscriptions or apps and have cryptic buttons. stores now feel like border control, straight out of a black mirror episode. i can't imagine the frustration they must feel. it just feels backwards.

Because you cannot even control your ads to users? No one of you devs gets punishment for tracking users' personal information, pushing scam, phishing and malware to users, and now users are not even allowed to protect themselves? Users don't drop trackers and malwares to your servers, why do you drop trackers and malwares to users' machines?

Because you are working for a corporation that joins in World Wide Web Consortium, who literally says this in the Ethical Web Principles?

> People must be able to change web pages according to their needs. For example, people should be able to install style sheets, assistive browser extensions, and blockers of unwanted content or scripts. We will build features and write specifications that respect people's agency, and will create user agents to represent those preferences on the web user's behalf.

https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/#render

If you cannot maintain your service, paywall your features, not forcing malwares and trackers to users. No one forced you to serve 1080p, 1440p or 4K videos to everyone for free. You were the one literally "advertised" yourself as a "free" service at beginning, in order to hoard how many users you could. And now when you cannot control your own costs, you push malwares and trackers to users? The mentality of hoarding users with "baits" like "free" are the real poisons for the internet, for both of you and your users, NOT users who are doing exactly what World Wide Web Consortium tells them.

Where are all your MBAs in your corporations? The ones bragging about themselves on LinkedIn and now the only resolutions you can think of is pushing malwares and trackers to users? All of the finance classes in your college should be simplified to advertisement classes I guess? That would save a lot of resources for everyone.

You can tell who has never been in control of a budget and had to fire people because more than half their audience is using adblockers.

Anti trust has been a joke since the 70s, when the threshold moved to "consumer harm (so blatant people will vote me out of office)"