If you don't want the ads, don't consume their content. It's that easy.

There are useful forms of advertising. I want to know if a new mom & pop restaurant opens down the street from me. A sign on the side of the road for example letting me know they just opened.

I also think it is perfectly fine to offer free content in exchange for a few seconds of my time to watch an advertisement. This is simply a different payment method. Time rather than a currency exchange.

The issue with advertising is that current marketers seem to have no limits or boundaries in which they are not willing to cross. This is just another example of where pure capitalism is failing us. We can't tell monopolies like Facebook or Google "no" or otherwise limit their reach. Government regulation is a must.

this period in time.

Because I spent all night on my Commodore 64 when my parents thought I was asleep. I failed several classes because I refused to do homework.

Today I've had an incredible 35 year career in technology up to and including being a CIO. I own three separate business, property rental, an ecommerce site, and an arcade bar. If you ask me, I would tell you that school failed me, I didn't fail school. They wanted me to spend 7 hours at school and then two more at home doing busywork (home work) on subjects that mostly have zero relevance to my life today. That's bullshit. I learned far more using that C64 than I'd ever have learned doing that waste of time homework.

and have no idea how it actually works.

Backtracking in 3.. 2.. 1..

Terminator may come true next.

Oooof. You aren't very bright are you. World is getting stupider by the day.

I don't know. Are they?

Oh... you've actually seen people using them! So... yes.

Not to support Apple, but this is super silly argument. Apple does not and never has made their own displays.

I hope you're trying to be funny. Because the amount of people who believe this horse shit continues to amaze me.

Because SMS is just ONE of the several things they are used for. They are used to get 100s of thousands of different IP addresses to click on links at websites for all kinds of fraud and manipulation. Ad revenue theft, voting on polls, posting bot comments with fake accounts, etc.

That's because that's not their primary purpose. They were used to send SMS spam, bots to click on links on facebook, youtube, etc. They got busted because one of their customers used them for something nefarious.

For me, just being at the Dr. Office causes it. Medical, dental, hospitals, all give me terrible anxiety. It stems from an operation I had as an infant. It's just engrained into my brain that these places are bad. Its irrational, but the second I leave the facility the anxiety goes away.

I have really bad White Coat Syndrome. When I go to the doctor's office my blood pressure is always very high, as in they always freak out.

However when I leave the doctor's office and go home, my --multiple-- blood pressure machines always have a reasonably normal reading.

I found this out, because every doctor I've ever been to wants to put me on a higher dose of BP meds, and when I go on them, I get dizzy. Then on the follow up visit they say, I still have HBP and need to increase the dose again. Then I pass out in my living room a few days later. This has happened with three different doctors over about 10 years. New doctors think I am crazy and don't want to believe me. It's super frustrating.