There's billions of people out there, man. They're way more varied in their values and behaviors and internal logic than you could imagine.
I'm much less informed today than ten years ago about what movies are coming out, what concerts will be in town, what pizza places have opened in my area, etc. But those are cool things. In becoming fully tolerant of any kind of advertising, I've denied myself some useful info. I still reflexively block all ads, but there's been consequences to that. Sometimes my interests align with an advertiser in that I do want to know what products or services are available in a given category. It doesn't mean I'm going to believe an advertiser's claims unquestioningly. I'm an adult, I know how the game works.
It's easy to get into a bubble and let it make you too extremist so you start to miss the big picture.
I see that viewpoint too, but if you see value in ads, why would you want to pay $5/mo for less relevant ones?
I'm certainly in a bubble here, but I'm really struggling to imagine the combination of privacy conscious, frugal, and not-bothered-enough-to-just-install-ublock-and-ghostery as a winning combination.
To put it differently, I'm confused why there's not a $10/mo ad-free tier, as that's what I'd personally prefer.
You could definitely be right that it's too niche of a tier to make sense. I can just see the logic (on paper) that surveillance is the worst part of advertising.
I used to pay for physical newspapers and magazines that had ads in them, without complaining. It was a simpler time. But then internet content was free for so long and Google etc. abused us for so long that I can't feel good about paying for a news web site at all now. Even if it was ad free I don't trust my traffic isn't being sold in at least some obfuscated way.
I'm much less informed today than ten years ago about what movies are coming out, what concerts will be in town, what pizza places have opened in my area, etc. But those are cool things. In becoming fully tolerant of any kind of advertising, I've denied myself some useful info. I still reflexively block all ads, but there's been consequences to that. Sometimes my interests align with an advertiser in that I do want to know what products or services are available in a given category. It doesn't mean I'm going to believe an advertiser's claims unquestioningly. I'm an adult, I know how the game works.
It's easy to get into a bubble and let it make you too extremist so you start to miss the big picture.