Why people are angry about this Fantastic Four 'advert'

HTC has angered users through a push notification that appears to be a blatant advert for the new Fantastic Four movie.

The company announced two months ago that it had begun testing promotions in BlinkFeed, a news and social content aggregator in the company’s Sense Home Launcher.

This makes sense, as it is a free service which users can disable.

However, users of the One M7, M8 and M9 devices on various carriers have all reported a push notification advertising a theme based around the new Fantastic Four movie.

While this is an advert for a theme as featured content, it’s not hard to see it’s a pretty blatant promotion for the movie.

Advertising of this kind is a sneaky way to circumvent Google’s Play Store limitations on promotional push notifications, and already seems like a misstep to the user base’s wishes.

As one redditor said:

I was considering HTC for my next phone. I guess I'm not any more.

While not many people like adverts, most accept them on free content, as free content needs to be funded somehow.

But having an advert pushed onto you, on your phone, which you’ve already paid for?

Not cool.

HTC has been contacted for comment.

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