I disagree, I think the removal of ads is often painted as a benefit that had inherent value. Look at YouTube premium or Prime video. Both haven’t actually improved their offering, just made it worse by introducing ads and insisting users that don’t want to see ads have to pay for the privilege of not being advertised to.

This means the total price adds up to higher than 100% of the product value, because it’s a ‘premium’ version that comes without advertisement inconvenience.

Paying for the product and paying to not be inconvenienced by ads have become separate things. The first is standard business, the second is extortion.

‘I recently took a french class, and yet I don’t even know half of these german words’