One thing to note is that you are not alone with this feeling, in fact when I read your post it really remindend me of the song ‘I am Machine’ from Breaking Benjamin if you like Rock/Metal music.

Also if you do not want another cosmic scale existential crisis, please do not look up the meaning behind my username ;)

So their models have trouble opening a dropdwn menu and their best solution is to implement mass surveillance of the employees?

Seems a bit overkill tbh aside from being qustionable in general.

I wonder though if pressing “skip” is a good idea in terms of privacy / not giving them what they want. I don’t think this was implemented for our “convienience” and rather as yet another manipulation technique.

Just some ideas what I assume they achieve by this:

• By pressing it you have to divert your attention towards the ad, even if it is just for a short time.

• You might unintentionally signal your preferences which could be used for profile enrichment

• You also provide information, that you are still actively at the device an watching (I assume ad providers have more interest on having more/longer ads on content that is actively watched)