Well, there’s a few aspects of it. If they push it, it could make my experience worse (This tends to happen with any service that’s pushing AI). I also consider it to be highly unethical, so it lowers my opinion of their ethics (not that it’s high to begin with) and makes me more likely to protest them on ethical grounds. After all, I’m here now instead of Reddit for similar reasons.

That seems like a quick way to get me to cancel my Spotify subscription.

Under plurality voting, third parties are objectively bad for the winning chances of whatever party they pull more voters from (and/or bad for whatever major party you personally would vote for, if you personally vote third party). That might be what some people meant by them being “bad”, even though they prefer one of those major parties to win (and cheer on anything that makes the other party less likely to win). Although it’s certainly possible that some people just think they are bad in general. People do have different opinions, after all.

It’s only hypocrisy if they do things that disagree with their own views, and their own views are internally conistent in this case. Their view is not that all third parties are bad, their view is that third parties that have a negative impact are bad. So it doesn’t make it hypocrisy just because it disagrees with your straw man of their views.

I’m pretty sure this is not the type of mirage you linked (which would be above the real horizon) but rather one that is below the real horizon. That is, the ship is seen above the real horizon, but the water near the horizon is hidden by a mirage of the sky. You can faintly make out the real horizon, as well.