@Antelope I finally said fuck it and installed Ublock Origin on my laptop, and now wish I had done it earlier! The ads have just gotten so retarded and insufferable that I couldn't take it anymore. I held out for a long time on the basis that I'm willing to give the ads a shot in exchange for all the "free" videos I watch on Youtube, but they completely abused that by making the user experience suck so badly. I can't believe how badly most of the ads are conceived and produced; they get 5 seconds to "hook" the viewer into wanting more, and in most cases stupidly waste that. Also the sheer number of ads that are obnoxious music or noises with no words, so when you were trying to listen to a podcast you don't even know what the ad is even for as it interrupts you.
I went to reinstall Firefox on my phone as I had removed that and a bunch of other things during an aggressive cleanup session way back when. Found that I can't download it even direct from the Mozilla website without going through Google Store or Apple Play. Sucks cause I listen to a lot of sped up podcast content while working around the ranch. I'll fart with it some more soon and clean up that experience as well.
It amazes me how many interruptions and ad servings it stops. The count on the Ublock icon is between 300 and 600 in EACH of the tabs I've had open for a bit over 24h. If you haven't installed an ad blocker yet, I strongly recommend you do so.
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