Maybe it's because I disable things and go through the settings with a fine tooth comb after a fresh install but I never see this stuff. Not discounting others' experiences either. Can't imagine being inundated with this stuff like some are claiming they are.
Same. With Windows 10, everyone was like there are ads and shit in the Start menu and browser nagging and all that jazz - never ever seen any of them. After fresh install, I do my settings, let it sit for a while to do the Windows Update, delete (uninstall) all the unneccessary tiles from Start and that's it, literally.
I mean, yes, you can do that, but then that brings us to the question: why does the user have to do that, spend a lot of time changing settings to make an OS bearable? Imho, any OS should ship with sensible defaults that have the user in mind.
If there's little to no need to go through the settings, you probably will miss a lot of them and never know.
Also, I think after a fresh install going through some settings to check out what you have, what you don't have and what you can have is not something only power users should do, but that's a power user's opinion 😅
Thing is, most normal users do not care about the settings. They use the computer like a TV, turn it on and expect it to work.
Nothing is stopping power users from looking through the settings to find good things to tweak, of course, but setting weird defaults to make a user look at their settings is indefinitely worse than, say, an optional tour of the OS that greets the user on their first login.
I didn't feel like it was that much when I used windows either. But then I started dual booting linux, and I realized just how much I had been ignoring. I had just gotten used to closing every notification without reading it.
It's kind of cursed knowledge thing. It only takes like <10s a day, but once I noticed it it really bothered me.