Escaping Ads
Ads are not meant to serve their target audience, they exist to serve advertisers (advertising companies and their customers). Recently, people raised a stink over automobile companies starting to distract drivers inside their own cars, with bloody annoying ads that show up while they drive and should absolutely focus on the road. Today, as in this morning, a "Smart TV" (Tizen, Linux, Samsung) started spewing out consent dialogues for spying and advertising after a software update. They know no boundaries, do they? Even some dining places are getting filled with ads. Some songs/tunes are themselves ads, same for films (sine the 1990s, maybe earlier). This sort of takeover creeps into places that are increasingly more private, even some bedrooms and maybe even bathroom stalls.
Even some Apple cheerleaders are noticing this. Despite being fooled/conned into paying Apple way too much for cheaply made plasticware from sweatshops they are getting bombarded with ads. Is Apple dying as a brand? Did it simply quit caring?
Here's a prominent Apple booster ranting that "John Ternus Should Reverse Apple’s Slide Down the Advertising Slippery Slope", citing the old "Apple Snubs the IAd" (and what Steve Jobs used to say about ads). "The Ads on Apple News Continue to Suck, but at Least There Are a Lot of Them," said the Apple booster later or separately.
When Apple boosters openly complain about Apple it means something serious happened and a threshold was definitely crossed.
Free software typically but not always helps people escape all of the above-mentioned problems. Linux will not... because Linux is just a brand and now it is controlled by companies that leverage it to make ad-serving 'cluster bombs' like Android (or Tizen). As Thomas Grzybowski once put it in an excellent article, "Free Software Freedom is Not Linux". We need to think above and beyond Linux. GNU/Linux turns 43 next month. It began as a movement against technology which controls the users, instead of the users controlling their technology (that they use and sometimes own, hence they deserve full control). When users do not want ads, then no ads should show up, period. █
Last year: 'Tech' Gimmicks Are for Advertising, Not for Usability
2022: Unethical Advertising, Published as So-called 'Articles', in CNX Software
2020: The Linux Foundation Turned Linux.com Into an Advertising Site
Image source: The Rice Bowl