Some of us are old enough to remember when the entire point of cable TV was to avoid commercials. Over-the-air antenna TV was supported by ads. But then cable came along, and went “hey, what if we offered a paid TV service, without the ads?”

Then they realized they could just fucking double-dip and show ads anyways. And now they’re charging extra to skip those ads.

And we’ve seen streaming services start to take the same route. Some have started showing ads to paid users, then charging extra to avoid the ads.