It was a thing last… summer? Where reddit announced they were going to start charging for every call a third party program made using the API. This was done with the intent of shutting down 3rd party reddit apps and to get users on the official one so reddit could make more money. However, it also destroyed a bunch of 3rd party tools that mods more or less needed, and which reddit had been promising to implement themselves for years with no progress. There was a brief protest where mods of many subs shut them down (mostly for less than a week, though some are still down IIRC). A bunch of users and moderators left reddit and went to other sites.
If pointing out that EVs aren’t a real solution is enough to alienate those “allies” they weren’t really allies at all. It’s also less about individual choice to move to areas with better transit, and more about pressuring the government to install better transit everywhere instead of just funneling endless money to car manufacturers.
It was never going to be free forever, because that would be leaving free money on the table, which is unacceptable to any evil megacorp (which is to say, all of the big three). I imagine PSN initially being free was mostly a result of trying to bridge the gap between PS3 and 360 sales, given the multi-year delay and huge price difference.
The US (and all of their allies) are in favor of wealth redistribution to the ultra-wealthy, so predatory practices like this will never be stopped unless there is a sufficiently organized and pissed off mass movement calling for it. Researchers are a tiny group, so it won’t happen.
Mine are super inconsistent now. Obviously I have uBO, but I can typically watch like 10-ish videos a day before the popups start, at which point I just turn on libredirect.