[MattGaiser]

Be willing to pay for them.

Users don't pay for reddit. People staying don't pay for Airbnb (it is just a cut of the booking). Advertisers pay for YouTube. Conferences, influencers, and rich people seeking reach pay for LinkedIn.

If you want something pure and ad free and aligned with your interests, you and the platform need to share interests. As things stand, they do not, as your version of a great platform is losing money hand over fist for them.

[taauji]

I agree. Being willing to pay for services reduces companies from doing such things,

But offering something to the public for free for years and once they make an essential useful place in the society, using their position as ransom to extract money is still unethical in my eyes. e.g. If Reddit was going to be a paid service from the beginning, this would not have happened. They only shove their advertisement and dark patterns ridden app when they have gotten their users addicted. Same thing with Youtube, Gmail and other services. Reaching critical mass and then using their market position to extract money or selling data.

[carlosjobim]

Or you could be grateful for what you got for free when you had it for free. But if there's one rule for the 21st century, it is that nobody is ever grateful for anything. Give a man a fish and he'll scream "I wanted steak!"