Because for the first time in 14 years money is no longer free.
Right now the interest rate sits at 5% and it will remain there for the foreseeable future. Investors no longer have the patients to wait for growth because bonds are actually investable now, so all your “get user first find business later” companies began to panic and tries to squeeze everything out of its users.
Hilariously, the only social media company that will come out of this relatively unharmed is probably Facebook, because their unethical practices actually makes money
There used to be a trick where you can skip ads in youtube app by pretending to report it. i’ve used that to skip the 2x30s unskippable ads over the years, but that was patched recently.
So instead of occasionally watching ads while scrolling through comments, I’ve now opt to watch youtube in browser with UblockOrigin. And good luck to google for playing catch-22 with adblockers.
Shame that I used to have youtube in my adblock whitelist