Those Windows 7 screenshots evoke a sense of nostalgia for the time before a Windows that broadcasts and monetizes my every action. I think an even bigger “fuck you” pattern is when an OS that I paid for tracks me and monetizes my private information.

Maybe I’m just getting old.

Nope; Windows is getting old :-P

Time to switch to another OS. Consider some newbie-friendly Linux, like Mint (linuxmint.com).

Agreed. I am a Mint user and I couldn't be happier. I switched around one year and a half ago because I was concerned about the constant data transfer (increasingly harder to deactivate) between my devices and Apple/MS. I was also sick of seeing unwanted ads and notifications both in Windows and Mac.

Personally I'm on Devuan because of my aversion to systemd, otherwise it would be mint for me.

Hm, nothing for Android - for either ff or chrome?

It's been reported[0] that Firefox Nightly has a Debug menu through which one can bless a custom collection of allowed extensions to get around the new Mozilla Nanny State™ but I haven't personally expended the energy to try it

0 = https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-ad...

You may be looking for iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome, the chrome repo has the firefox extension as well, fyi.

Darn, it actually works! Thank you a lot for the mention.