I think it's because people (some) are all talk. We bitch about corporate greed and stuff like this, but when it comes down to it, when you need a new electronic device and one's half the cost, which one do people buy?
The one with ads and that's made by slave wage third world workers, or the one that's twice as expensive?
As a whole, we tend to be garbage and materialistic...
As a whole, we tend to be garbage and materialistic…
This might be one way to see it. I think a lot of people WANT to resist, but resistance costs a lot of mental and sometimes tangible energy.
If you can smooth out a lifestyle that naturally excludes stupid brands like Roku, great.
But there's a point when you want to participate in the rest of society, and people will break down for that. I do my best to avoid walmart, amazon, and other abusive tech companies, and educate others to do the same.
But someone still gifted my mom-in-law one of those stupid "alexa" spheres that I immediately put on its own V-LAN, and the family wanted a TV so they brought home a TCL/Roku because it's what they could afford. (It was a good value at the time, years ago.) PiHole showed me exactly why it was so cheap.
Companies know after all the stresses you already encounter in your adult life, you're gonna run out of bandwidth and cave eventually, because you're human, and the path of least resistance becomes more tantalizing. That's why they bombard you relentlessly, and evil tech is the most immediately accessible and familiar.