It has been heavily discussed already, and I probably don't have a lot new to add to the whole "ads as a revenue model" debate, but the apps that were my main source of doom-scrolling time-bereavement have left my life for a few weeks now, and the difference is starting to show. This unintended yet somewhat hilarious effect I owe solely to the companies that tried to keep me on their platforms.

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So what happened? Well, I used three main social media apps: YouTube, Reddit, and a little bit of Instagram.

When looking at the timeline, I suppose Instagram was the first to fall from grace. When they changed the 'home' screen and added 'suggested posts' plus extra ads on the home screen (in a poor attempt to recreate TikTok, I am told), there was nothing relevant anymore when opening the app. Everything felt messy and cluttered, and it certainly did not help that every two proposed posts alternated with an advertisement. You also have to take into account that those 'proposed posts' often contained hidden advertisements by their creators.
I used Instagram as a tool to have some visual logbook of my hobbies, to find inspiration for said hobbies, and to maybe occasionally take a peek into the lives of my high schoolmates and see how they and their new families are doing.
When I could no longer discern posts from friends and family from the ads and influencers' posts, I knew it was no longer the platform for me. The app sat unused for a long time on my home screen, until recently a friend said they had sent me a few messages and I had not responded.
I opened the app, and I was greeted with a lovely request to pay $12,99 a month for an 'ad-free' experie-... No wait, how was that formulated right there? Oh, to have them not use your data for personalized advertisements? Bin, meet greedy trash.¹,²

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The next to be thrown to the curb was Reddit. I have always loved Reddit as a community, where you could find at any given moment someone who had the exact answer to some obscure question you had. In the past few years, SEO optimization has certainly messed up the relevance of the first two pages of search results. You only had to add 'reddit' to the end of the query, et voila! A relevant answer not made to gather clicks!

A lot of people are familiar with the whole API debacle by now, but for those who have not yet had the pleasure to read into it, here is an article describing the gist of it.
This one was the hardest for me to cut out of my life, but it was a necessary one. Even though Reddit is built on content created by users, moderated by said users, and they are even displaying ads to those users, they still can't find a way to be profitable. So their solution is to make the experience worse for everyone? Bin, meet heartbreak trash.

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And to finalize: YouTube. Ah, greedy, gluttonous Youtube. The first time I was shown the warning that my video player would be blocked if I did not let advertisers show me their crap, I had to chuckle and then laugh.
It almost felt like a compliment, seeing that warning. Pointing the patronizing finger at me, how dare I take away the earnings of these creators?
As if they were not the sole author and instigator of my complete and utter disdain for ads? As if they are not solely responsible for the way creators are rewarded and reimbursed? A lot has been discussed already. I find this video (warning; on Youtube) very insightful, and this more recent one (also on Youtube) discusses the possibility that they are breaking EU law with their recent developments.

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To conclude, the apps where I spent most of my online time and where I was most susceptible to being shown some relevant ads have all but disappeared from my life because they could not keep a healthy balance between the content and experience that I came for and the advertisements that 'made' that experience free. To a certain degree, I had accepted the existence of ads in those apps; otherwise, I would not have been using them for that long. But my main monkey instinct was triggered once they decided I had to see more and all of them, or else I would be punished.

That instinct has proven to be more tenacious than we thought; don't brute-force me your way, or I'll do the exact opposite.

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1. Imagine if they had asked for less, like say $1 or $2 a month. I might have considered it, you know. But now I'm left wondering "Is this what they earned each month from my usage? Is this the amount they need to replace that revenue?".↩

2. I am from Europe, this was following a new law regarding privacy and ads here.↩