ChatGPT, summarize this for me like I'm a geriatric politician.

That's including showing the ads. The data itself isn't worth that much unless people are viewing them.

The efficacy of advertising is sold primarily by advertisers. It's possibly worth a vanishing fraction of what these ghouls say it's worth. But so long as buying it and acting like a greedy invasive bastard is more profitable than ignoring it, even by a tiny margin, corporate giants will keep doing it, since the cost to them is a rounding error.

The industry enabling this is large because they get to sell the same garbage to so many bastards.

As an OSS advocate, I fully agree. Sadly, OSS alternatives have to compete with easily accessible, slick and well-integrated products that are aggressively positioned. Just imagine all the steps you need to go through, just to install Fennec from F-Droid.

Exactly

If you want to pirate, pirate. But there are plenty of free and public domain sources of entertainment and information.

Same with software. It won't be exactly the same experience but if the goal is truly an altruistic attempt to not give money to bad companies or avoid tracking or whatever... there are ways.

I pirate shit. I am not going to pretend it is some holy struggle. I want things that I don't/won't pay for.

I recently converted to Linux and am loving the FOSS environment. Together with my NAS which covers my "cloud storage" and media server needs, I'm having an awesome time not having to give away money and/or my information just to use my own hardware.

To be fair, it makes sense to liken the use of ad blockers with piracy. Consuming the content without paying for it either way, either without directly paying yourself or without indirectly paying through watching ads. Doesn't change that ads on most parts of the internet are extremely invasive and far too much.

I feel fully entitled to protect myself from the ads because of the problems with them. But I don't feel the need to lie to myself about the fact that I'm consuming content without paying for it in some way. Then again I support some content creators that I feel deserve it. Not sure if that helps offset it somewhat or not, but I don't really care that much either.

Anyone who considers adblocking immoral shouldn't block anykind of advertising anywhere.

Fuck tipping. American tipping culture enables employers to get away with paying their hospitality service industry employees starvation wages. By giving a big tip you are just telling the employer "Don't worry about paying your employees a living wage. I got you fam."

Obviously I still tip depending on where I am, but the minimum amount that is considered socially acceptable.

They have to break the law to make sure that you aren't "breaking the law".

This is why we need a p2p mesh internet.

Everyone: "But Explodicle, the bandwidth will be terrible!"

Meh, all we really need is basic communication infrastructure that isn't hostile. Everything else I can wait to download... like the 90s.

Open signups happen frequently but you have to be quick to catch them

Opentrackers.org and r/opensignups (or r/trackersignups) are good to check once in a while

MyAnonaMouse has open applications twice a week and the test is very easy

Depends on which tracker. In general though invites and you get invites by association with relevant groups. Sometimes open registration occurs (though rarely) an other times the trakcer may do interviews.

It mostly comes down to time and patience.

By not torrenting. Use Usenet instead. Way safer and easier. Once I went Usenet I literally haven’t touched a single torrent in over a decade.