I was using a friend’s phone for checking something online the other day, and I was horrified at how much screen real estate was wasted on ads. I’ve become far too used to having adblock on mobile, and I had forgotten how bad it can be.

I always find it jarring, because I’m so surprised that people put up with it and just accept it as normal. I get that I am an extreme outlier when it comes to my willingness to tinker and also my stubbornness that makes me extremely willing to spend a heckton of time to solve problems that are annoying me, but for many people, switching to a different browser and using uBlock would be trivially easy, but they just don’t, even if they know that’s an option. I don’t understand the mindset that leads to it.