I would love to know from the rest here - isn’t a solution to the ad creep just… not buying things? Like going for second hand / refurbished, avoiding big brands for food and drink, and just not shopping online (ffs)? Or am I being naive? Enlighten me!
Of course working under the assumption that the government cannot (yet) admit to tracking us for more sinister purposes. That’s a problem for another day.
I use neutral DNS, a variant of ad block on my router, waterfox ad block, ublock origin, and noscript. So I’m doing my part.
But yes the ultimate fuck you is just not buy stuff. I mean these days, if I do see an advert, maybe I will think about it, if when rarely it gets my attention, and then I’ll forget and go on to do other stuff. I think the only thing I bought this year was a video game, and that was because I could get it for $4 since I sold all my CSGO skins. A lot of these companies shot themselves in the foot by making online shopping the major outlet. Personally, I can’t be bothered to make an account nor do I really trust anything I don’t see in person. Avoiding big brands is more difficult now since they rebrand the same stuff; think of Trader Joes.
I fix as much stuff as I can to avoid buying stuff, partially to take advantage of my skills and partially out of spite. Like my mouse, switches went bad, I upgraded them for a few bucks. Or the tea kettle stopped working, ripped off the panel where the switch is, turns out the plastic bit wasn’t making good contact to trigger it; modified it to work.