Sounds like you’re an iPhone user, or at least someone who doesn’t have kids with Android phones and doesn’t participate in group activities where the people primarily use iPhones.

I won’t bother explaining it all, but the real issues are group chats that contain both iPhones and Androids, and image/video quality, reactions, etc. The issues are bad enough that kids especially get left out of group chats over it, and bullying incidents are widely reported (and I’ve seen it first hand)

This post is referring to beeper mini. It’s confusing naming, but that’s not the same as beeper(cloud service). Beeper mini is available to everyone on the play store and is not a cloud service. You just get it, login to Google (to pay the subscription cost) and it works. No invite needed

I’ve learned that (at least on both Android and Google TV) you can start an episode, immediately go back then start a different one and there will be no ad.

On Firefox with ublock, you have to hit the play button 3-4 times, but it works and there are no ads.

Now I have that song stuck in my head.

I get if your position is that the ads are too intrusive, but if you don’t want ads at all, you need to understand that that is not a viable solution for free services. If your position is that you feel like your use of that service should be subsidized by others, who can afford it more, I can even understand that. But they do also offer an ad free experience for a fee.

I don’t love that they’re doing this, but I do understand it.