HTC recently started showing promotions through its BlinkFeed home screen reader app. It's a somewhat controversial move that sees BlinkFeed — which had previously been free of advertisements — starting to show "interest-based" ads alongside news and social content in the U.S., UK, Germany, Taiwan, and China. That means you might have started seeing sponsored BlinkFeed items on your HTC One M9, One M8, Desire or other HTC phones. Fortunately, if you're not a fan of ads in your feed, it's easy to opt out altogether.

Identifying ads Ads in BlinkFeed are clearly marked as such — look out for a "Sponsored" label, and a "Download" or "Buy Now" button next to the item's title. For example, something like this: Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines You can't dismiss individual ads by long-pressing, like you can regular BlinkFeed items. Instead it's all or nothing — to disable ads you'll need to opt out entirely from the BlinkFeed settings menu. Turning off ads in HTC BlinkFeed