My mom recently retired and returned her work laptop which she used to pay bills, send emails, shop on Amazon, etc. I helped her pick out a cheap little Beelink mini-PC and went over to her house to help her set it up. Super easy, no issues, the Beelink is ten times more powerful than anything she'd ever need. Should last her pretty much forever. Very happy with it.
But it's rare that I use any computer that isn't mine, carefully set up with my Fedora Linux just how I like it, my colors and themes and fonts, my software as open-source as possible, my little custom scripts and quality of life changes, my terminal apps, and perhaps most importantly, my ad blocker.
I'm so used to my cozy little system that I forget what a horrible, confusing, nefarious, deceitful mess stock Windows is. I'm not going to force any kind of Linux or FOSS stuff on my mom based on my personal views. She just needs a browser and maybe a file manager. I did install Chrome and pin that to her taskbar instead of Edge though, I just had to. I doubt Chrome is any less horrible and evil than Edge but I figured it's the most popular browser for a reason.
And I don't know, I was just a little shocked when I started bookmarking her sites and encountered the most aggressive and predatory ads I've seen in recent memory. I typed the name of her bank into Google to bookmark the website and the first two links were overt scams made to look like the real site and were being advertised by Google. I set a Disneyland wallpaper and in the process of finding one on Google images and downloading it I had to close three or four popups and navigate a website with literally a half-dozen fake download links, all bigger and brighter and flashier than the real one.
Even when I installed an ad blocker through the Chrome extensions store I was bombarded with ads for what I think were fake, scammy ad-blockers, though I certainly didn't investigate. It just kind of stunned me for a moment. Like this is the default internet? This is the internet you're supposed to use? It's insane. It's so unethical and malicious and ugly and horrid. I felt like I was walking with my mom through a dangerous street and I had to protect her from muggers around every corner. How is the internet allowed to be like this?
I know I sound silly clutching my pearls over this and I know this isn't any kind of new revelation, but man, it just really made an impression on me. And that's not even considering all the data mining and tracking and other privacy invasions that are going to be on her computer but that's a completely different topic.
I don't know, just angry at massive tech companies lying to my mom and trying to trick her and prey on her and grateful for Linux and ad-blockers and the FOSS community.