It’s not a choice you get. There’s only a handful of ad networks out there, and you get to choose one. If you don’t do that, the only other option is to make people pay for your stuff - which most won’t do because they’re so accustomed to ads.

You can’t force the ad networks to rethink. As a dev, your choice would be to completely paywall the app.

Should Ruben vet the entire Lemmyverse while he’s at it so he can “dictate what appears in his product?”

As a solo developer with limited resources, one has four choices:

• Choose an existing ad network and do the best you can within its content preferences,

• Put a paywall on your app’s features and hope enough people will actually buy it,

• Work for free, sacrificing your own livelihood, or

• Don’t develop the app.

Clearly they all involve a compromise of one form or another, and I trust that Ruben put a lot of thought into the decision.

And do what? Reinvent the universe?