Wherever I go, I often see the sentiment "This website has ads, so it's trash" pop up in conversations. And honestly I don't quite get why. 90% of the internet has always had ads, you just scroll past them and mind your business. At least they're personalized now so you can pick a topic you like instead of diapers and miscellanous spammy trash as there once were.
Ads are the epitome of the enshitification of the internet. It corrupts the incentives to make anything online.
At least they’re personalized now
This is a whole other can of worms that makes it so much worse. From data harvesting to selling your information to third parties etc.. It is a privacy nightmare and rather malicious in nature. This is one of the things that FOSS (Free and open-source software) tries to remedy.