I am not one of these people, but I believe I can fairly accurately steelman their point of view to reasonably speak in their behalf:
- Privacy concerns: Allowing ads leads people to feel that there is an increased amount of tracking their data, etc.
- User Experience: Many people fear that introducing ads, even as an option, could gradually lead to more intrusive advertising practices that will eventually diminish the quality of their own experience. It becomes a slippery slope and more and more things will get paywalled and put behind ad requirements until it just frustrates them to feel like they have to either pay or use ads to get a reasonable experience. Whereas if that never starts, the risk is lower.
- Ad Fatigue is real. People already feel bombarded, and even though this would be optional, they would have to continue to hear about the benefits they’d get from doing it themselves. It’s just easier to not have it start and not get pushed to try it out.
- It’s not uncommon for ad networks to lead to the possibility of malicious ads or malware or the code for it added to an app having added vulnerabilities which could impact them even if they aren’t using or seeing the ads. It’s just easier for them to feel safer not having it exist at all. Any code changes are likely to add increased potential for more bugs, and this feels like a needless code change to them that might cause them to experience bugs even though they don’t use the service at all, and that doesn’t feel fair to them.
- Social Perception…they may feel reasonably confident telling people that they have/use Wyze, but if the name starts to be degraded in certain ways, people may feel less proud of that or afraid others may make assumptions about their choice.
It seems like they shouldn’t mind if they don’t plan to use it and thus it doesn’t seem like it should impact them (this is how I mostly feel), BUT many of them will point out that even if they don’t use it, it still will or could impact them. I think some of the above rationales are actually fairly reasonable reasons for people to choose to vote against it even when it is “optional”.