The fediverse offers a noncommercial alternative and that can be a draw. A “normal” Reddit user might not want to join us, but there will be users fed up with all the ads on Reddit, some of Reddits policies, tolerance of nazis and abuse and so on. Mastodon always was in the shadow of Twitter, a nice, but blew up when Musk started to destroy it. It offered a way out and that is worthwhile. And if Zuckerberg is starting to transform Instagram into a rightwing horror show, Pixelfed is there as an alternative. And if you want out of YouTube, PeerTube is working and ready for you.

Those fake download buttons go way back - they were around in the late 90s. In a quarter century the ad industry hasn’t managed to block this easy to detect scam. I mean - how hard can it be to not allow ads that are just a big button with “download” on them? Therefore I never will deactivate my adblocker. Fuck them.