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Like I explained with the initial post, 99% of the time I try to avoid exactly that - averting my eyes, scrolling and using peripheral vision to see when the ad's gone. Not taking screenshots or pausing because that's engagement. I've tried both tactics of pausing to click "Hide ad - irrelevant", or just scrolling past as fast as possible.

I did, twice apparently, stop and take screenshots because my therapist wanted proof. If I get an ad for pistachios or moisturizer these days I do the opposite - pause, click the ad.

I use uBlock for my laptop browser, and Safari content blocking on my phone, and have looked into stuff at the router level. I don't disable ad-blocking for any site.

The issue is primarily with mobile apps, which don't support ad-blockers and serve ads from their domains. I just found out about Nitter the other day, and didn't realize that you could now use Instagram/DMs from a web browser instead of using the app, so I will try that going forward.

This possibly affects things like YouTube recommendations too, not ads - I use it logged out and mostly search for music but if right now I open the site my top recommendation is a meme video "no amount of therapy will make this scene ok". I don't see any cookies and am not sure how to reset whatever session id for a fresh start.

I hadn't thought about skewing the ad auctions that way, thanks. I used to get ads for fancy river cruises, Peloton, high-end furniture cookware etc and will try searching for that stuff again, but am guessing the data brokers know I no longer earn an income. Failing that maybe pretending to be looking for payday loans, lottery, coupons might be "lucrative" enough.

Good point. I meant that I give feedback to try to hide the weird/creepy ads, though. I've never clicked "stop showing me Ritz crackers or Crossfit ads" just because I'm not interested.