This is the "ad". Personally, I don't think a little plug like this is worth any kind of fuss. If it were a real ad or something, then yea I would get it.
This. Any unsollicited communication that's meant to make you investigate or buy a commercial product is an advertisement. That's all. Is it less intrusive than the TikTok ad in Windows start menu, I think it may be, but it's still an advertisement, by definition.
As I mentioned in another comment, it's still a commercial offering, that happens to have a free tier. Would we be okay with a YouTube link in the same spot?
Honestly, it doesn't bother me that much. It's more that you can see a more and more corporate-y trend in Canonical's decision making, which I personally don't really care for. If I used Ubuntu with the default shell I'd probably just override the MOTD and go on with my life.
I mean.. It is literally an ad. I don't see how you could not consider it one. You could claim it doesn't bother you or isn't too intrusive or something, but it most certainly is an ad.
I see a lot of people comment that this isn’t that bad and that it might even be acceptable, and that’s exactly the problem here: it’s a gateway drug and if we normalise this, Canonical will keep pushing the limits of what they can pull off before it’s not acceptable anymore, and that sounds when it’s too late.
Kind of, they have announcements in the terminal sometimes and telemetry wont go out unless you confirm you want it to. I personally have it disabled, but its not invasive.