One of the things I hate about tech is seeing useful things slowly being repurposed into ad-spammers:
- A “notification” is not supposed to be for ads but it seems every other app uses it for (almost) only ads. To hell with that.
- A pop-up alert message is not supposed to be for ads but guess what happens.
- When you mistype a web address, Internet protocols prescribe what the correct response should be; guess what your ISP does instead?
- When you launch an app with the intent to do some specific thing, instead of the app allowing you to start doing that thing, your intended action is usurped by an at-launch screen (i.e. ad for something completely unrelated to what you launched the app to do). Bonus points if it manages to forget the on-launch context entirely, e.g. conveniently forgets the document you asked it to open and just stares at you blankly after the launch-ad goes away.
- When you pause a few seconds to gather your thoughts and haven’t gotten around to doing something, guess what happens now? OH THE USER IS IDLE, BETTER SHOW THEM STUPID STUFF. (Thanks, Netflix.)
- If you use anything, seems like you get E-mail later that day, and the “unsubscribe” is now just “manage your f*cking preferences” where they present you a page of 50 checkboxes for the INDIVIDUAL UNWANTED THINGS (all pre-enabled of course), that you have to uncheck and “save”, that then “take 3-10 days to take effect”. I want these people fired and banned from their industry.
Every other action now is clicking-away, swiping-away, tapping-away things I didn’t ask for and don’t want, with no option to turn most of it off (or if it is, the option is ultra-buried and conveniently forgotten on the next update).
Sounds to me like you're the victim of a whole load of shitty services. When I get a notification, it's usually something I've set up like a calendar event or an actual message. The only exception that comes to mind is Netflix, but I just haven't bothered disabling that in the Netflix settings yet. I make it a point to purge any app that sends me ads through the notifications, because nobody wants that bullshit.
It could be my Pihole at work, but I haven't seen ad popups either. I thought the internet as a whole has moved past DNS redirects but I guess some shitty ISPs still use them. AFAIK, you can change the DNS in your router to point to one that doesn't do the hijacking in most cases.
Even email spam seems to have gone down over the years. Using the built-in unsubscribe button in Gmail has made getting out of these stupid mailing lists completely painless.
You should invest a little time into a good ad blocker and spam filter, I feel like it would improve your experience online dramatically. Most ad and marketing companies are the scum of the earth but technology has evolved to the point that they're getting easier to get rid of as well.
- A “notification” is not supposed to be for ads but it seems every other app uses it for (almost) only ads. To hell with that.
- A pop-up alert message is not supposed to be for ads but guess what happens.
- When you mistype a web address, Internet protocols prescribe what the correct response should be; guess what your ISP does instead?
- When you launch an app with the intent to do some specific thing, instead of the app allowing you to start doing that thing, your intended action is usurped by an at-launch screen (i.e. ad for something completely unrelated to what you launched the app to do). Bonus points if it manages to forget the on-launch context entirely, e.g. conveniently forgets the document you asked it to open and just stares at you blankly after the launch-ad goes away.
- When you pause a few seconds to gather your thoughts and haven’t gotten around to doing something, guess what happens now? OH THE USER IS IDLE, BETTER SHOW THEM STUPID STUFF. (Thanks, Netflix.)
- If you use anything, seems like you get E-mail later that day, and the “unsubscribe” is now just “manage your f*cking preferences” where they present you a page of 50 checkboxes for the INDIVIDUAL UNWANTED THINGS (all pre-enabled of course), that you have to uncheck and “save”, that then “take 3-10 days to take effect”. I want these people fired and banned from their industry.
Every other action now is clicking-away, swiping-away, tapping-away things I didn’t ask for and don’t want, with no option to turn most of it off (or if it is, the option is ultra-buried and conveniently forgotten on the next update).