They really had achieved the dream. They made a streaming account affordable and more convenient than pirating, so they had tons of customers, with piracy a long lost pastime for people like me. Then they got greedy like you said, and annoying, and many of us dusted off our sailing gear.
And some Twitter embeds with a little X logo in the top right meant to look like a close button, but it’s actually a link to the site. I swear, these internet billionaires have become rich with stupid little “tricks” that shouldn’t fool anyone, but apparently fool most people.
I really hate the forced 2fa on shitty little sites that nobody would care to hack. I also really hate that just about every site and service requires you to give them your phone number now, which of course they immediately start spamming, and you have to send a text to a short code, which might have hidden charges associated with it, to opt out. I don’t want anyone having my phone number, but you have to give it if you want service. That VoIP idea you have is great.
That actually seems plausible. I never click anything except for a video I’m searching for. I don’t engage on YouTube, and if there’s an unskippable ad, I immediately leave. So I would definitely fall into the “unlikely to click ads” category.