Either ads don't work, and so I'm doing them a favour if I block them, or they do work and in that case it's fucking evil mind control and you bet your ass I'm going to block them. There's no scenario where blocking ads is not the moral choice.

This is exactally it.

It’s puff pieces like this too. Are we supposed to pat them on the back, give them our loyalty, because they are not using the latest technique?

The piece is pretty much we don’t use AI, go on our social media and lap up our human made mascot.

Short story is they tried AI, they jumped to the next option, hating AI, they used data to analyse these techniques and then make an article to promote this. All to sell cookies.

It feels like a constant battle to keep the manipulation away.