It's a hardware channel to deliver you an ad platform selling you video games. Steam has better vertical integration (they are selling the games they are advertising), but it's the same idea. I haven't seen Steam OS telemetry reports, but I would expect they're basically the same as every other tech player. The platform _is_ open and hackable, but the OS is immutable and it's still an ad device.
I think there's a world of difference between showing people ads for games when they visit a store page voluntarily, and showing people ads in their social media feed when what they want is to see their friends' updates.
I understand being anti-add, but we are talking about store here selling and distributing products. Which makes reasonable attempt to serve relevant suggestions to user. Of new games or games that are somewhat based on what users have already played or followed.
Now if Steam store was showing third-party advertisements I would be on barricades.
And no one actually forces you to use the Steam on Steam Deck it is linux box with root access in place...
Seriously though. Can we have some nuance in the debate about advertising? Surely the bit we object to is the invasive, privacy and democracy-eroding tracking - not the concept of advertising itself?