In the 70s the ads were a one-way broadcast. Now the ads watch you back.

Far beyond the time wasted, they're an invasion of privacy.

My interpretation of "break web pages" was serving XHTML with MIME type application/xhtml+xml, in which case browsers don't render anything when the XHTML isn't well-formed, which is really just a strict / validate-my-syntax mode you can opt into.

In either case, I agree!

I think you're confusing XHTML and semantic web on the "break web pages" part.

At the point in time when I disabled notifications for the app, it did not. I tried that. Even after navigating dark patterns, digging into the menus, and turning those options off, I still received promotion notifications.

Perhaps they've fixed it since? I don't know because they've already burned my trust and they've done nothing to earn it back. Publicly acknowledging and apologizing for this would have been a way to start getting off my list of bad actors.

Even if they've made it possible to successfully turn those off deep in the menus now, whatever dreamed-up definition of "opted in" it's operating under is a tortured legalistic one that undermines the actual meaning and spirit of opting in.