Every time I see an ad, I make a mental note to avoid the brand.
I would do this but I don’t see any ads
I don’t understand ads. Do people actually use services and buy products because of a shitty advertisement?
You do, and don’t fool yourself that you don’t.
You probably don’t click on ads, but they stick in your brain. You might see a half-dozen ads for Doritos, and then when you go to the store a week later, you’re slightly more likely to buy Doritos.
The vast majority of advertising is just getting a brand or an idea into the back of your head so when you’re looking for something in that product category, regardless of it’s a VPN, a web host, a snack food, a car, or whatever, you’re going to have a bias towards what you’ve seen in the past.
Most of my ad-blocking isn’t to stop myself from buying some herbal supplement/spray tanner combo, it’s to stop myself from being biased by the capitalist propaganda machine.
I am not immune from advertisements, and neither are you.
I actively avoid buying anything I’ve seen being advertised.
You are not immune.
Yukhk. I hate how so many of these services spend most of their efforts on marketing instead of making a decent product or experience. Isn’t mullvad one of the actual best VPN providers out there? NEVER seen them run an ad, hell, I only found out about them on accident due to mental outlaw, some ordinary gamers or the linux experiment. Can’t remember which tho.
There are more reasons than that, but it’s definitely near the top of my list.