I get the idea that "oh man we've got billboards in every home, imagine the money" motivation.
I don't get how that gets through the usual meetings and there's no sense of "people won't like this, they will associate our products with obtrusive ads".
Ive noticed an increase in white goods appearing in my network-managers SSID list.
I currently have a Samsung fridge/freezer and a delonghi espresso machine in the list in nmcli dev wifi.
My friend has recently moved and bought a new Samsung fridge/freezer for her new home.
I did a quick wifi scan on my phone and there it was. The new samsung fridge/freezer waiting to be connected to the internet via the app you have to download.
It works fine without connecting to the internet.
I told her not to install the app or connect it. So she hasn't.
Maybe in the future, if you are obese, or struggle with food, the manufacturers will be able to monitor the contents of your fridge, how often the door was opened, how much food is eaten, take a quick photo of you each time you open the fridge to monitor your weight, and, if it has become a problem, lock the fridge so you cant eat any more food.
The fridge then contacts all the local fast food restaurants and supermarkets you use, to prevent you from buying any more food until you lose a few pounds.
I’m just picturing a scenario where the fridge won’t open its door unless you finish watching an AI generated, very low quality, scammy ad. Looking at you, YouTube…
I'm in the process of selling the 3 Samsung devices we have at home. It seemed like a no-brainer to buy affordable quality from a reputable brand.
Then the TV got annoying, slow, pestered with ads and new Privacy updates every month; our oven has some bugs that need a software update and the clock resets without Wi-Fi; and god knows when the washing machine will do something similar.
Samsung is a massive company, it really doesn't need to be doing this. Extremely rich is rich enough, shareholders!
Any statups working on where a homeowner can just "subscribe" to their appliance set for the house? With appliances getting more and more high-tech, low-quality and not worth repairing its not sustainable to keep replacing appliances every few years.
"Smart" devices have become so ubiquitous that we don't use the "Internet of Things" buzzword, but this Twitter account is still doing god's work documenting the insanity: https://x.com/internetofshit
A few years ago someone showed a BMW concept car with an LCD Panel as the entire body of the vehicle. I called it back then, we're going to need Ad blockers for everything.
It would be fine if you willingly buy stuff which shows you ads. But what happens is that you buy stuff without realizing it shows ads, or - even worse - it starts showing ads long after you bought it.
Case in point, my echo show first showed ads months after I bought it, but only once every few days. Now, it shows ads almost all the time.
I wonder how this is even legal here in Germany.
For a while now Samsung and LG have been on my list of appliance makers not to buy. And this simply confirms that decision. I do not want smart features in my dishwasher, laundry, stove, or any other appliance, and I sure as hell don't want them to be internet-capable.
It frustrates me greatly how little people, and especially regulators, value attention in modern society. Your behaviors as a human are largely driven by the things you pay attention to, and advertising is a form of driving your behaviors by bringing your attention to things that are good for them (and not necessarily good for you!).
In other words, advertising is a form of mind control. By hijacking your attention, it hijacks how you think about the world and changes what sorts of things you focus on every day, pulling your mental cycles into products when maybe without seeing that ad you'd instead be thinking about family.
I really think the social and societal cost of advertising is immense, and that it should be strongly regulated. Especially because most people greatly under-value their own attention and under-estimate how much seeing ads in their kitchen every day is going to disrupt and hijack their normal thinking patterns.
In the US, regulators exist largely as rubber stamps and are 99% captured to do the bidding of megacorps while throwing roadblocks in front of small businesses and ordinary people.
Samsung fridges were not great even before they started showing ads. The back of my Samsung fridge constantly freezes itself into a solid block because it doesn't defrost properly.
What surprises me is that they don't forcibly try to connect to an open wifi network. I'm thinking the Comcast xfinity network. It feel like something that they would do.
That's what Amazon Sidewalk and things like the "Find My" network is for, and one of the big reasons for the 5G push despite it basically being total shit. It's coming.
I was fully invested in Alexa & Echo devices to have a voice-activated computer agent in every room, but each new "feature" was launched enabled-by-default, and every interaction started including "follup-up" prompts....which is all just ads.
I know that such devices are another sales channel (funnel?), but when you compromise the customer experience in the name of increasing sales that's a failure of the product.
The Kindle doesn't inject ads into the books you're reading because it's a successful product that already drives increased book sales by good at what it does.
There's an ad-supported Kindle, but that's opt-in for a discounted device price, and the ads are non-intrusive while reading a book - unlike Alexa/Echo where the ads get in the way of using the product :(
51 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 65.6 ms ] threadI don't get how that gets through the usual meetings and there's no sense of "people won't like this, they will associate our products with obtrusive ads".
I currently have a Samsung fridge/freezer and a delonghi espresso machine in the list in nmcli dev wifi.
My friend has recently moved and bought a new Samsung fridge/freezer for her new home.
I did a quick wifi scan on my phone and there it was. The new samsung fridge/freezer waiting to be connected to the internet via the app you have to download.
It works fine without connecting to the internet.
I told her not to install the app or connect it. So she hasn't.
Maybe in the future, if you are obese, or struggle with food, the manufacturers will be able to monitor the contents of your fridge, how often the door was opened, how much food is eaten, take a quick photo of you each time you open the fridge to monitor your weight, and, if it has become a problem, lock the fridge so you cant eat any more food.
The fridge then contacts all the local fast food restaurants and supermarkets you use, to prevent you from buying any more food until you lose a few pounds.
The new wegovy-ai-fridge.
cool!
Then the TV got annoying, slow, pestered with ads and new Privacy updates every month; our oven has some bugs that need a software update and the clock resets without Wi-Fi; and god knows when the washing machine will do something similar.
Samsung is a massive company, it really doesn't need to be doing this. Extremely rich is rich enough, shareholders!
[0]https://www.theverge.com/news/780757/samsung-brings-ads-to-u...
In other words, advertising is a form of mind control. By hijacking your attention, it hijacks how you think about the world and changes what sorts of things you focus on every day, pulling your mental cycles into products when maybe without seeing that ad you'd instead be thinking about family.
I really think the social and societal cost of advertising is immense, and that it should be strongly regulated. Especially because most people greatly under-value their own attention and under-estimate how much seeing ads in their kitchen every day is going to disrupt and hijack their normal thinking patterns.
I was fully invested in Alexa & Echo devices to have a voice-activated computer agent in every room, but each new "feature" was launched enabled-by-default, and every interaction started including "follup-up" prompts....which is all just ads.
I know that such devices are another sales channel (funnel?), but when you compromise the customer experience in the name of increasing sales that's a failure of the product.
The Kindle doesn't inject ads into the books you're reading because it's a successful product that already drives increased book sales by good at what it does.
There's an ad-supported Kindle, but that's opt-in for a discounted device price, and the ads are non-intrusive while reading a book - unlike Alexa/Echo where the ads get in the way of using the product :(