Generally no.
A few larger companies do.

the more you walk, the lower your risk of death

So if I never stop walking I’ll never die!? Awesome!

Yes. Absolutely. No question.

The story is about a little guy, fighting the big corporate power that already beat him once, and is trying take over everything. It also explores trans-humanist themes of person-hood, and AI.

I did not. I didn’t have an iPhone to be able to get onto the settings with.

That’s the most iOS looking app I’ve ever seen on Android. Not a fan. Sorry

Or subscription, or freemium, or merch, or raffles. Lots of options beyond that even.

Advertisements distort the market arrangement. When one uses advertisements to generate revenue, it inherently creates a situation where the advertisers are the actual customers. This incentivizes the site toward the needs of the advertisers instead of the users in any situation where those needs don’t align.

So yes, eventually it would be the end of the world. Within a decade or two the site would go to hell. We’re seeing it already with most ad based sites. People are complaining Google is getting bad. We already know that Reddit is. That’s why most of us are here. News sites go to shit, when they distort themselves for advertisers. Example after example of advertising, making site after site worse over time.

The advertising model, is the original sin of the internet.
We need to find another way.

Lets try it this way. Would say your favourites things, include everything you like? Do you like some things that aren’t your favorite? Do you keep a list of everything you’ve ever liked? Would it be as big as the list of your favorite things?

Do you see the difference? It’s a mater of degree that separates them. They are not the same. That’s why they are two different words.

You are in a way. Just not only that.

Favourite and Bookmark are absolutely different things. They’re two different lists for you to use as you see fit.
Neither of them is a Like though. I’m not sure that fact is really debatable.

Mastodon doesn’t have Likes at all.

The star you’re referring to is Favorite. Those go into your Favorite list. So you can refer back to them more easily.

A unified API and a single login, are two separate things.

A single federated authentication could be a good idea. But the various federated services are different enough that they should have different APIs.

Not sure where you are, but there’s practically no place in the US you get a lunch for that. In flat terms it’s quite cheep. It’s only expensive relative to free.

And when you think about it, your search service really is your internet. It shapes your whole internet experience. If that’s not worth $5/month to make sure it’s good and not polluted with ads, I don’t know what to tell you.