The height of the desktop era was before surveillance capitalism was a thing. With web came the on-line ads, which, being a cancer[0], infected the business models of increasing amount of software. Then the mobile exploded, and the new breed of native software - apps - were designed to be user-hostile pretty much from the start, and continue to be so.

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[0] - http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html