All these abuses have a single cause - users not in control of their computers. It's no coincidence that vim's start screen isn't being monetized this way.
Absolutely 100% this, it's fucking heinous. I have no idea how to effectively fight it, but it's so rough watching the tech industry abuse people more and more every year.
The cool thing about GrapheneOS in this regard is that it allows you to use Play Services if you want to, but you can limit it to a single profile and don't have to give it the special privileges it usually wants ("Play Services Sandboxing").
I hated when Microshaft started taking over my lockscreen in w10, showing me photos of nice places every day while I'm stuck either in a office or working from home. It makes me feel miserable. Fortunately It's still possible to change the settings.
I also found this feature depressing, but for a different reason: it took away my autonomy. It was as if I'd come home to my living room only to find that someone had changed all the art on my walls to something else.
If I had to guess a percentage: 95% of people never explore settings.
(Annecdata: When Windows started combining labels in the taskbar, everytime I asked someone if they liked that, or they prefered seperate labels, they said seperate labels, and then I asked them if I could quickly change it back for them, and they always let me. It was an easy-to-find setting, but no one ever bothered.)
Normally I'd agree that the average user is bad at computers, but the comment I replied to specifically said they wanted to change the image, ergo, they were intended on customizing, but somehow thought they weren't allowed to.
This is old news. A lot of these Android lock screen ad companies came and went in the early 2010s. I'm sure we'll see a few copycats pop up and die this decade as well.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 87.8 ms ] threadIs it? Every time I run npm install my terminal gets plastered with ads from the likes of "open collective".
Replace the stock OS on your phone with LineageOS (or similar). Don't use apps requiring Play Services. Get stuff from F-Droid.
GrapheneOS.org users disagree.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31988367
(Annecdata: When Windows started combining labels in the taskbar, everytime I asked someone if they liked that, or they prefered seperate labels, they said seperate labels, and then I asked them if I could quickly change it back for them, and they always let me. It was an easy-to-find setting, but no one ever bothered.)
I wouldn't be so sure.
Luck happens, I guess.
I am pretty sure my next pocket device will be such.