Some of us are old enough to remember the web and other services before they had ads. I remember quite well when the first started showing up, people called them "banners", and it was infuriating.

I never accepted the change in the expectation that everything will now be ad supported. That's a fundamental, massive shift. You can still say no that imposition, it's not actually baked into any of the technology, just a bunch of bloat glued on afterwards.