> The idea that you'd willingly use an app with baked-in ads is insane to me

Do you have any friends outside tech circles?

Any time I see friends from non-tech industry browse web on their computers I wince so hard. I can't understand how they stand it but it's normal for them. It's also normal for them to wait few secons until pages/apps load because all the crap. Those people make up 99,9% of users everywhere except select sites like HN.