I am also in that basket. To me Usenet seems like another, older protocol that achieves practically the same thing. If someone is more knowledgeble, feel free to correct me or explain further.

I also can’t understand lobbying. To me, a non-US person, it just seems like legalized corruption.

I have been having this problem 2 days ago, but I have started using NoScript in combination with UBlock Origin yesterday and i didn’t see any ads after that.

The main culprits are the big oil companies. They made the carbon footprint term to make us feel guilty and shift the blame from the biggest polluters.