I started using Linux Mint about 5 years ago because I’m interested in tech and wanted to mess around with it a bit. Now I’m staying on Linux Mint because I don’t wanna deal with Microsoft’s bullshit ever again. No more ads, forced updates, surveillance and crashes. Just a damn solid OS that does its job.
When you have enough personal info about a population you can engineer advertisement so effectively that you can convince that population of almost everything. See Brexit.