2 ms·

No free apps? What about if you need one for banking or health insurance or something else essential?

• Wingy 5y ago
  If I understand correctly, these are paid for by you or by taxes, not through an app download fee.
• acomjean 5y ago
  I think those apps are subsidized by your membership or accounts. They aren't services paid for by ads. But it might be better to use those in browsers with ad-blocking, though honestly I'm not sure
  • cle 5y ago
    That doesn't mean the apps aren't using analytics services that feed the data back to ad networks. Not only are these data useful for targeting ads to you later, they are useful for targeting to other people since they can be used to infer characteristics and behavior of similar people, which can then be used by advertisers for more precise targeting. There's an built-in conflict of interest with mobile platforms, both Google and Apple, who both run advertising networks that are incentivized to collect data on you to improve targeting, whether you look at ads or not. (It is helpful that Apple's core business is not advertising, though I still don't trust them.)