[capableweb]

> Even though I had been a (long time, non-family subscription) premium user of Spotify, they started playing ads during podcasts (music was fine). How is that a "premium" service? Canceled the sub.

In the beginning of time (well, maybe not that far back), there was TV. Soon, TV had ads in them, but fear not, because you can pay extra each month and get access to premium channels that don't show ads, because you are paying extra. Soon after, they started showing ads as well. But then came the streaming services, promising Ad-free lands if you just subscribed to their service. And people did, but soon thereafter, found that the streaming services also added ads when you decided what you wanted to watch. Amazon Prime is a prime example of this.

[TheRealDunkirk]

Ted Turner started cable without ads, which is why you paid for it. That lasted about 5 minutes. I suspect the whole "no ads" thing was a bug bandied as a feature, because Turner couldn't GET advertisers on the new platform when it started.

[mvdwoord]

In the beginning of time (well, maybe not that far back), there was TV, TV had ads in them. Then there was bittorrent, and life was good.

[darkwater]

Where you have to navigate forums or websites pestered with ads, scam ads and plain malicious ads. Yeah, uBlock Origin I know but still...

[sekh60]

Radarr, Lidarr, Sonarr and LazyLibrarian got you covered. Get on a few private sites for torrents or usenet and never visit them again.

[darkwater]

But then you are almost centralizing again on a few, literally closed platform/communities where you also are at risk of data leakage if breached.

[capableweb]

Ignoring the fact that those two events were like 60 years apart :) But sometimes it takes a while before life gets good I guess.