You have to realize that you are not in the same financial situation as the vast majority of people (based on the hoity-toity nature that HN readers are all well paid). The vast majority of people just accept ads as part of life and do not care one bit about the evils of the adTech world. If they are able to get a service essentially for free or at least a significant discount, they don't mind ads. Most people don't even notice them. If an ad free paid for service was the only option, I'd suggest that a lot of the user numbers would drop.

I'm a weird person in that I'm not anti-ads, but I am anti-adTech. Commercials on OTA broadcasts are good times to get up and get a refill, go to the restroom, are just hit the mute button. The days of DVRs were glorious as well as you could just fast forward through the ad breaks. Streaming platforms are the absolute best thing that ever happened to adTech. They cannot be skipped. That guarantees to the ad buyer that they will get their air time which helps adTech push ad buy rates.

The money made from advertising is not to be dismissed. It can be very significant to bottom lines, just ask Vizio* where they make more money on data than they do from the hardware sold used to collect that data.

*https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...

The problem with the companies run by people who want to accumulate goodwill is that they will always be outcompeted by companies run by shithead assholes making number go up, because empirical evidence is that not enough consumers give a shit about goodwill to make it a real competitive advantage.