Jellyfin is a safer bet

That's the thing: it will take me more time and attention to figure that all out, plus either a hardware purchase or even more time and attention to spin up an appropriate VM - e.g. I wonder if Netflix ads can be bypassed if my router itself is running a blocker specifically for them - and if so would it be like a minute of empty space at the start of each show (I could totally live with that), or randomly 5 minutes of such every 10 minutes (possibly depending on the show, and maybe more frequent if it keeps trying bc it knows the ads weren't previously delivered).

I haven't done such for over a decade, and the landscape has entirely changed. I was hoping that a couple of shows that disappeared from Netflix when Disney+ came out would get me by for like a year. And it might actually.

Anyway, Netflix knows all this, and is counting on people not willing to put in the time & energy to bypass it. Which is fine - it is a service they provide after all - so now it's a matter of how much pain they can get away with causing before the other alternatives start to look more attractive...