So, I live on the eastern slope of the Appalachian mountains, just west of Washington, D.C. It’s lovely here most of the year, but winters are particularly nasty; we get a lot of icy weather. I hate snow and cold rain. I really hate ice. Ice belongs in a glass of water, not falling from the sky.
Of course, we are in the midst of one of those ice storms, and it’s predicted to be particularly nasty — 2 inches of ice is the very definition of a frozen hellscape. I’d been watching it, so of course, I responded when the Razr 2024 told me there was a bulletin from the National Weather Service. I think most people would have done the same.
I’d never really paid any attention to what the “Moto Widget” on my phone had to say. I like it because it’s a big clock, not for any weather updates. I wasn’t expecting what happened when I did, though: I was directed to some Motorola system application (with an Ad at the bottom of it) and a red banner to click through for information about the storm.
Tapping through that, I was hit with a full-screen ad. A particularly scummy ad with only an “Open” button for a website. To close it you had to tap the X in the upper right.
I said, and I quote, “Hunh”. it’s got to be because I’d never used it before or something and they can’t force an ad on you every time you tap that thing. I tried like 20 more times and learned I was wrong. You are forced to click past a full-screen advertisement each and every time you tap the damn thing.
This is absurd. I was sitting warm and cozy on my butt and checked the weather, but what if I were out in that … slop? I get it that nobody is going to be driving into an ice storm and checking its current location from behind the wheel, so this isn’t really life and death, but still. There has to be boundaries. Motorola crosses them here.
I dislike ads, to begin with, but I do think they are acceptable in a lot of cases. Broadcast television and radio stations need some way to pay the bills and stay in business so they don’t disappear like WHFS did. I miss that station. No content is actually free, you either pay with money, time, or data, but “free” content can have some well-thought-out ads.
Yes, I know Android Central has ads, and sometimes they don’t seem very well thought out. When one of our ad networks gets loopy, we have a team that finds out why and fixes it asap. We show ads for free content to help pay the bills, but we don’t want them to be horrible or poorly-timed ads.
Mistakes aside, there are some situations where ads are simply unacceptable. Paying for Amazon Prime Video and getting ads is wrong. Ditto for any paid streaming service. If your content is worth it, charge $1 more a month for it instead. Putting ads into the system software of any consumer electronics you paid full price for is even worse.
It’s terrible and stupid when Samsung does it. It’s also terrible and stupid when Motorola does it. It almost makes me want to stop using this phone out of spite, and it’s one of the best phones I ever had.
Motorola, Samsung, Google, and the rest of the players are tracking your every move anytime you use your phone. There is no need to display any forced ads on a device that costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
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