Very much Lies of P.

True, that is a thing to consider. I have to use an iPhone because I get it through my place of employment, and if I had a nickel for every time the actual OS postponed an automatic update because I wasn’t connected to power / I seemed busy / the stars just weren’t aligned properly, I would probably have over a dollar.

In that respect, I like my desktop (Debian) so much better: I can set it to update the OS automatically, which includes all installed software (as long as it’s installed through the official repository), and it will let me know if something failed to upgrade, so I can do it by hand. Also, they rock at getting critical security updates out in a timely manner. I’m not sure how much I trust Apple with that.

Using the default browser on an iOS device should be fairly safe, assuming that you accept all security updates as they become available. Outdated browsers, on the other hand, are a major security risk.

For legitimate free movie sites (Plex, etc.), ads are indeed the main source of income, along with paid services like the ability to rent current movies. If you are smart about it, they may not collect too much of your personal information.

For the rest, the business model relies on pop-up based scams, hijacking machines for botnets, and ransomware.

I’ve been on the web since my college installed Mosaic on their HP-UX machines. I wanna say summer of '94. Thus, I can honestly say that I’ve seen it before the first commercial banner ad was sold later that year. I actually thought ad were worse in the early 2000’s than they are now. Flash should never have been used for that, for example. My main problem with ads these days is that there are sites where the signal/noise ratio is just ridiculously bad. In those cases, I vote with my feet and stay away.

Ever hear of "Can’t read half a sentence without

I have (no kidding) taken u-turns to see an interesting billboard. Anyway, the analogy is flawed: You still see the billboard, even if you don’t read all of it - just like I see the ad, but may not really read it.