I’m not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium
I’m not sure if this is well-known or not that they’re pushing it now, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it, especially on old.reddit.
What about using old + an ad blocker?
I just use Firefox with the standard ad blocking extensions and I’ve never seen an ad on new Reddit.
Yep, except after two or three “pages” of scroll, the new Reddit UI becomes infuriatingly laggy.