Although adverts on the fridge are absolutely terrible, is this genuine? Here's a reddit post some time before that suggesting the scenario: https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
We really need some legislation that outlaws this sort of control over devices we buy.
If someone wants to install an advert app on their fridge (I assume in exchange for money) then fair enough.
If I buy a tv I shouldn't just have to accept that, now or in the future, the manufacturer will sell advertising on it.
> If someone wants to install an advert app on their fridge (I assume in exchange for money) then fair enough.
No, it should be illegal even when done willingly. Because this worsens the bargaining position of everyone else.
That might sound strange at first, but we've seen enough now to know that this will inevitably mean that a lot of manufacturers will follow this model.
I can imagine deals where you get a huge 'rebate' if you permanently enable the ad-feature (the on-screen wizard will blow one of those tiny fuses as its final step, locking the device to that setting). That effectively mandates that the price for the device is its selling price minus the huge rebate, and the whole market will adjust to that.
Just ban advertising on those devices.
"Telly" [1] is a real 55" TV that is available for free. It is designed to always, constantly be running advertisements.
> To reserve a Telly, you must agree to use the device as the main TV in your home, constantly keep it connected to the internet, and regularly watch it. If the company finds that you violate these rules, Telly will ask you to return the TV (and charge a $1,000 fee if you don’t send it back).
1: https://www.theverge.com/televisions/777588/telly-tv-hands-o...
This reads like a really bad Black Mirror episode. Holy hell.
In what way?
The device that immediately springs to mind is the Kindle. You can choose to buy a version without ads, or save ~10% and accept ads.
That seems like a reasonable compromise.
Also because just because something is done "willingly" doesn't mean they fully understand that it may not be in their best interest, long-term. This is why drugs are illegal.
From another posts recently, just the fact some of the greatest minds in our planet are mostly working in advertising and trying to squeeze the most out of consumers just tell us everything. Our society is so rotten. This time of the year it gets even worst.
Their minds aren't that great if they chose to work in ad-tech, let's be honest.
Intelligence and empathy aren't necessarily corrolated. I'd imagine many people in the ad industry are very intelligent, and earn a lot of money though choosing to work in that industry, but care very little about what their work is actually doing to people beyond squeezing every cent out of them, or are able to use their smarts to rationalise their work actually being good.
Idk I'd argue they are correlated. Lack of empathy leads to eternal suffering. So you'd be pretty stupid to lack empathy.
Maybe because money, it does that to people. I tend to agree.
Already done! You agreed to it in the Terms and Conditions - you did read them, right?
But yeah I agree with you, there needs to be a way for people to get away from ads without relying on the existence of some benevolent alternate company
Terms and conditions can't just force anything on the buyer. like, you can't enslave people and point at the terms and conditions. It should also be outlawed to enshittify products with terms and conditions.
Yeah, I agree with you on both. I don't see much of a way out though that doesn't basically require dismantling the entire for-profit corporate order.
Rossmann Calls it the "EULA Roofie."
Why didn't you read the EULA is like asking a roofie victim why didn't they have a chemist analyze their drink first.
Despite what the average multinational will have you believe, terms and conditions usually don't hold up in court. If they write some illegal bullshit into it, it's just that, bullshit.
That may be true but doesn't help if not accepting the terms prevents you from using the device.
On a practical level you then at best have a battle to get a third party (the retailer) to give you a refund and most people faced with the option of removing and returning a huge expensive device like a fridge with no guarantee of a refund are going to just leave it.
It does need some stubborn and tenacious people to make a stand and set a president - perhaps backed by a consumer rights group but it's an uphill battle.
> huge expensive device like a fridge with no guarantee of a refund are going to just leave it.
oh I'll fix it with a hammer, or glue a piece of cardboard on it.
I paid extra for devices without WiFi when I moved house this year.
Sure, but that depends on the thing actually being illegal first. Genuine question - how often in practice are terms and conditions successfully challenged? My thought is that companies like that would be able to drain plaintiffs out before it getting that far very often
If ignoring them is your only option, and challenging them would fail, we would expect to see a lack of challenging them. Which we do.
Unless there's a solid track record of people consistently challenging them and winning, we can assume, based on bayesian priors, that most people cannot.
Which makes sense: court costs money.
Hmm, maybe there's a simple legislative fix for this problem. Basically vendors that want to make you "rent" devices would have to allow termination for convenience at any time by customer including repayment of any fees paid by the customer for the device.
Termination for convenience is a standard term in contracts, hence well-understood by corporate lawyers. The repayment could be reduced using a depreciation schedule so the longer the device is in your hands the less that's returned.
I think this would work. The legal machinery is already there. The market would work out the details.
Outlawing this specific scenario sounds pretty hard. I can see only two reasonable options:
* Ban all advertisements. (I'm all for it, at this point.)
* Make sure smart-devices make extremely clear that they can be used to show ads, and include trivial instructions to disable ads
Forcing ads onto stuff we pay money for is not okay. Ads to fund free content is probably unavoidable, but even then, it needs to be clear up front what you're subjecting yourself to. Unexpected ads on devices you don't expect them from, can be confusing and disorienting for many people. For people with schizophrenia, it can clearly be dangerous.
And I think this is not just true for smart fridges, but also for those billboards at bus stops that seem stationary at first until they suddenly start to move or talk to you. Ban those please. Or make it clear upfront that they're video. Don't spring this on unsuspecting people.
> Make sure smart-devices make extremely clear that they can be used to show ads, and include trivial instructions to disable ads
The other way around — make it clear that the devices are capable of showing ads, and provide instructions on how to opt-in to them (and no cookie-like prompts either)
But..... then nobody will opt in to see the ads.... :(
Can we talk about billboards too? As in, giant, increasingly bright ads intended to catch our attention while we're supposed to be carefully operating giant speeding hunks of metal?
> Ban all advertisements. (I'm all for it, at this point.)
What would that actually look like though?
Take something that could be considered an ad, but probably most people agree is a good thing. Say you post on here that task X is such a pain in the butt to do all the time as a general gripe, then I say hey, I built a cheap subscription webapp to solve task X easily that you might want to check out. You sign up for it and use it and like it. Seems like everybody wins - you get a problem solved for a small amount of money, I make a little money and get my project used and my work validated etc. But it's still technically an ad.
Lots of stuff like that could be considered an ad. Every "Show HN" could be considered an ad. Suggesting people vote for candidate X or party Y could be considered an ad too - plenty of organizations do pay for actual ads just like that already. Product placements is a type of ad, but it's pretty hard to not do. I don't know how you even make a movie or TV show with people driving cars without showing a particular model of car.
I don't expect that's the kind of ad that everybody is complaining about. Okay, but then how do you legislate the difference? Can you, or anyone, actually write down a definition of the ads you want to ban and the ads you don't? And how will people distort or abuse those definitions? There's billions of dollars in advertising (maybe trillions?), it's not going to all just go away because somebody passed a law. What happens when all of that money gets poured into attempting to abuse such individual personal recommendations? That's already happening on Reddit now, though at small scales for now.
I have no problem with banning unprompted sales pitches along with other kinds of adds.
And are only the visible part of the iceberg. The part you don't see is the collection of personal data. That is linked to habits - and to deviations from habits - and that is shared with third parties.
At this point I'm convinced that ad spending has nothing to do with sales, revenue or any real business principal. It's about power and influence. Advertisers control the culture, news and the public discourse by always paying more than any self funded model would pay. They don't care how much it costs, the control over society is always worth more.
I'm going to keep this sort of on topic and this will not be a popular opinion.
No, this does not need legislation. If you don't wants ads on your refrigerator, how about not buying a refrigerator with a screen built in, it's not necessary.
People said the same thing about cars. People said the same thing about smart TVs. Do you know any cars currently being manufactured that respect your privacy?
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate...
Mazda is alright. iirc the CEO has expressed disinterest in touchscreens and distractions from driving
They have had to walk that back, because it cost them dearly in market share. Turns out most of their customers don't agree that touchscreens are unwanted.
There's also the fact that the problem was never about touchscreens per se, but inappropriate/incompetent UI design that happened to use touchscreens.
exception confirming the rule
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Try to buy a new TV without « smart » features. It’s nearly impossible and all of them will come with some kind of ads on it. I fear it will become impossible to buy a fridge without screen and ad if we don’t find a way to stop this. It’s pure profit for manufacturers and the consumers are fucked since fridge are basic necessities.
My last two televisions both came from the "Sceptre" line at Walmart which seemed to be the last holdout of non-smart TVs. I don't know if they're still holding the line; the model I checked just now says it has "V-chip" but doesn't say anything about a "smart TV" operating system or any of that nonsense. It's not very well-advertised but it's still around. I don't know of any way to find a normal TV that isn't from Walmart or a thrift store, though.
There are still a number of TVs marketed towards hotels who don't want their guests being able to mess with complex states that smart TVs provide. They tend to be a bit behind on the tech side tho.
That would be a waste of money on the manufacturers part. It will always be possible to disable the screen
I've long wondered what would happen if, say, NYT sued me for blocking their many ads (despite being a paying subscriber). My argument would be that I'd never click on the ads anyway out of principle, so the ad blocker is just me delegating the ignoring of ads that I would've done myself regardless. Also that if I couldn't turn off ads, I wouldn't have subscribed and they'd make even less revenue.
That said, I doubt these companies would sue because of the risk of setting a precedent in favor of the consumer. Scary legal letters (e.g. cease & desist letters) perhaps. But given enough customers, at least one will have the resources to hire a good lawyer and fight it all the way to court.
The lawsuit you described in the first question would be without merit. The class action lawsuit stemming from the second would be choc full of merit.
If the fridge is in my house and hammers aren't banned yet then that fridge will not be showing me ads.
No one can force you to watch ads, they're your eyeballs. There will always be a solution to this problem; if it's in your domicile then no one can stop you from spending time coming up with solutions
Nah, we don't want these leeches to get a chance to flood the market driving out competitors.
This shows an irrational level of faith in the market
And it you don't want to get roofied, simply don't go to bars or clubs.
>If someone wants to install an advert app on their fridge (I assume in exchange for money) then fair enough.
If you're advertising me milk on a fridge I paid full price of, send me a full sized sample of the product.
The weird part is that this isn't even a technical problem
I'm no prude, but I'm finding horror, pharma & sex ads to be incredibly disturbing in how they are presented. Google TV takes over my wall with moderately graphic horror movie ads. My family members aren't comfortable with horror and they have no way to use the TV otherwise. It's unsetting in the middle of the night. And graphic pharma ads for stomach turning skin disorders and other inappropriate disorders play even during casual, family content. And most of the sexual content is not family friendly -- even I find it awkward to have on the wall, especially when my parents visit.
These devices used to be ours with some level of control, and now they are all remotely managed to present awful content at all hours
At least with the pharma commercials they don't get "real" about living with a given disease. It's like stock footage of old people canoeing in slow motion and stuff.
You're right that most pharma are generic korean karaoke parlor videos, but a few of them show really gross sores, rashes that I don't want burned into my brain by an 85'' screen
The timing is just unsettling like i'm having a laugh and then subliminally the next frame is a raw skin lesion
Google TV showing ads on the home screen convinced me to buy an Apple TV. Had to go back to a set-top box - to use the same apps I have built into the TV - just because Apple won't spam me with this shit.
Apple won't spam you with this shit yet
Rumors are that Apple Maps advertising is incoming soon
the only way they will continue with AppleTV (TV+) is to put ads. they haven't gained enough subscribers to keep that business unit solvent.
It's a good tip, I may end up doing that. I'm hoping that Apple has better standards for third party streaming apps (just yesterday I made a Ask HN post about how terrible they are)
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Obviously made up...
This ad did the rounds last week and people were talking in the comments about this scenario.
Sure it could've happened, but odds are this is just made up.
Been there and absolutely can see this happening, it is sometimes a prodromal symptom called a 'sign of reference' [1].
I recall during my first psychosis episode thinking a TNT logistics van contained a bomb and was being used as a terrorist vehicle to blow up a building (or maybe at the time I think it could have been targeting myself directly).
Also, in that same episode, the train stations in Sydney were being plastered on every possible space and surface with high contrast white on blue posters that said "HEY TOSSER!" [2]; it was an anti littering ad campaign bringing some levity to the situation. My mind was overwhelmed by both its alerting nature and the fact that everywhere I would turn I'd see a poster, and in my infirmity it felt like someone was pointing a finger an inch from my forehead arresting me to say I should stop being a tosser in the derogatory (Australian slang) sense (though my mind was contending with the many multiple meanings).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_and_delusions_of_referen...
Rage bait marketing as some call it:
https://x.com/tbpn/status/1996352945710117030 / https://archive.fo/lTFWl
Yes it was made up. A post from two weeks earlier [1] showed a fridge ad saying 'We're sorry we upset you, Carol.' That post now has an update:
> EDIT 2: Hello, I am the original poster of the carol AD image from a month ago. I am a male from America and my name is not Carol. The story about a Schizophrenic woman named carol was most likely fabricated from the 3rd top comment on this post. Thanks!
Come in Hacker News, we're better than this!
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
Actually thinking a bit more, this doesn't prove anything. The ad was showing on many fridges, and apparently it said 'Carol' everywhere (it wasn't actually personalized).
Could be made up, sure... everything on Reddit might be made up. But dismissing it outright feels a bit too easy
this seems reasonable to me, i don't have schizophrenia but i'm pretty sure i'd start stabbing a fridge if I ever saw it give me an advertisement
Same. I’m pretty stable but just looking at pictures of that ad in the comments I felt my heart-BMP raise.
It isn’t just the fact that it’s an ad. The intense black and yellow is unsettling with strong ‘warning’ vibes.
Here’s a picture for folks wondering: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
That's a webpage with an ad being viewed in the browser app.
It isn't part of the "cover screen" (home screen) where the Samsung ads show up.
https://9to5google.com/samsung-smart-fridge-ads-how-to-turn-...
On one hand you're correct, but on the other hand Carol is a very common name and this is a very reasonable reaction. I'm split, and I think this is plausible enough to take seriously.
Manufacturers for 100 years didn’t try to wrap their fridges in ads, or tune the compressor sound to a commercial jingle. They sold mostly honest products to cool your food efficiently.
But when they add an LED display and Internet connection, suddenly they forget about cooling your food and impulsively add a bunch of adversarial functionality, meaning functions that monetize the consumer rather than keeping the food cool.
It’s like the Internet advertising ecosystem is a virus intent on infecting anything and anyone with an Internet connection, making them do bizarre customer-hostile things they never would have done otherwise.
You are way off: it's just about money. For a long time, making appliances was an ok business, making good stuff, selling them, factories running, employment, margins ok, ... and there was progress/innovation to do.
Now that there is not much to update or innovate with, and companies have already squeezed workers in Bengladesh to the max, the only current innovation and additional money source are "connected" and "ads".
I don't see any contradiction between the two takes; I suspect capital pressure will force us into an inhumane dystopia where baseline existence is miserable, and quiet rational thought is a luxury.
> and there was progress/innovation to do
Also cost-cutting to increase those margins. The ads are a natural extension of that.
Exactly. Nobody ever asked for a fridge that doubles as a billboard
Not really true. I've found coupons in new appliances. I've found detergent samples in a new dishwasher. That's advertising.
I inherited a Samsung fridge when I moved to a new place, it was a terrible fridge with serious mechanical flaws. The deicer broke, causing a constant stream of leaking water in the fridge. The French door middle component hinge was cheap plastic that broke and I had to replace it, then it broke again and I had to replace it again, then it broke again. I finally gave up and replaced the fridge.
Recommendation threads on Reddit usually begin with "anything but Samsung". They seem designed to be made cheap and hit the lowest price point with consumers that don't want to spend a lot more on something they don't really care about, so I'm not surprised to learn that ads are a part of their strategy.
But also, why do fridges need to connect to the internet?
You just described my samsung fridge.
Solidarity, friend. I hope you're able to keep it working on decent order. If you give up, I replaced it with a Whirlpool and it seems fine.
Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.
I don't see ads, thanks to ad blocking tech in browsers and smartphones. Any time that happens to fail and I get to endure an ad, I am amazed that regular people without ad blocking tech can endure this onslaught.
The time to negotiate a "middle ground" is long past. Let's not even entertain that idea.
An acceptable middle ground could have been designated areas for ads, which you have to seek out to see them. Think of the Yellow Pages.
Ad companies need to be reined in. They cannot control themselves. They are lobbying against all limits and controls. The only solution is to eradicate ads entirely and to make sure that anyone who gets that idea will never get it again.
There needs to be serious reform or just abolition altogether of advertising on things like Smart TVs
We bought a TV for my grandfather in his nursing home as he was dying from Alzheimers. All TVs available now are Smart TVs, which are already difficult to work for the elderly.
I'm visiting my grandmother now and watching the TV we had provided him, and it inserts ads into everything available to watch from the most accessible menu. The last ad block was 8 ads long, during which one of those was repeated twice, and had all the subtlety of a row of slot machines at a casino (I think it was for some silly tablet game which I assume has in-app purchases)
Straight up cruelty that should result in some serious fines or even arrests.
I bought a Sony OLED a couple years ago. I was able to set it up in “dumb” mode and all the default apps could be manually removed. It acts like a monitor and shows nothing but our Apple TV at powerup.
The home screen’s just a nice static background with a settings app and nothing else. I never see it unless I press the appropriate button, but it’s nice to know there isn’t an onslaught of junk waiting for me if I do.
YMMV but other brands with Google TV may have similar “dumb” capabilities.
This is irrelevant to what OP said which is that it this should be the default. One anecdote of "with effort and technical expertise I returned the appliance to a workable state" doesn't mean things are ok.
edit: Im not trying to be snarky, I think your reply was genuinely trying to be helpful, but its not ok that we're being sold this crap
"Well, you have to jump through all these hoops and have a CS degree and de-solder the radio and then power the TV on carefully and then–"
Yes, it is technically possible to de-fang some TVs, but it should not be necessary.
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I think in cases of people with Alzheimer’s or other elderly people who can’t really operate things besides play/stop/next dumb screen isn’t going to work. Mostly because you have to hook up something else that will require additional steps to operate.
My father doesn’t have any serious dementia or signs of Alzheimer’s - he is 65 but typing in anything on keyboard is still a major hassle for him. If he could have play/stop/next button it would work for him.
Until you get a mandatory software update.
Cars come with cellular radios now. It’s conceivable that other electronics could start to ship that way.
I pretty much make it standard practice to get an apple tv or whatever streaming device for all tvs and not allow internet access to the tvs. You have zero control over the tv, so why subject yourself or others to it instead of getting a $50 to $150 device.
> You have zero control over the tv,
This. This is the problem. TVs with user-hostile firmware are the only options available. Imagine if the only beds available were smart beds that wake you up with advertisements and project ads onto your ceiling while you try to sleep. Honestly it seems like we're almost there
The splash page on that website seems to be primarily AI-generated images. It looks cheap to say the least - such an obvious corner cut it's hard to have confidence in the product.
Absolutely true. I bought a "dumb" Samsung around 2010. It still works to this day. In 2020, I bought a mid-range TV with Android. The computer in it died after 3 years, and I wasn't able to find a replacement at a reasonable cost. I sat on it for 2 years before finally ewasting it, because the wastefulness made me sick. I guess my main point is that it was the "smart" part that failed. If it was just a display, it would almost certainly still be trucking along.
Because you used to be able to buy TVs that didn't spy on you, and we, as a society, have the power to make that the case again. It should be possible to have a fancy-pants 75-inch OLED TV that does not phone home and spy on you. Full stop.
I think it's pretty clear that voting with your dollar is a lie
All TVs?
or just all of the TVs you can pop over to Best Buy or Walmart and toss in your car?
Plenty of non-smart displays out there.
Maybe not plenty, but Sceptre works great for me.
https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
And they cost an arm and a leg. Yes, all TVs. You ought to be able to go to Best Buy or Walmart and buy a TV that doesn't spy on you. That should not be controversial.
Nobody said it was.
At least, not in this subthread.
Can you link me to a "non-smart" TV that can be ordered on the Walmart website? Curious cause I didn't think this was a thing any more, and I wasn't able to find one.
You’re making my point.
Take a half-step beyond the easy-reach (Walmart, BB), and they’re not impossible to find (as you made it seem).
Just…unnecessarily difficult.
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The fundamental problem here is a little broader than ads, but "ads" mostly cover it. The problem is the commoditization of human attention. The incentive to catch and sell attention is poisonous to all human endeavors. Some things need to grab your attention to fulfill their purpose, I'm not against the idea of something directing a person's attention. Where it becomes a problem is the murky line of that direction of attention being something that is bottled and sold, or otherwise used in the interest of the distracter rather than the distracted.
So ads that someone seeks out of their own volition? Fine. That's just marketing material, and falls in the same category as every product announcement, press release, etc. What if a product catalog is mixed in with coupons or other rewards? Not fine anymore, you've mixed up reward-seeking and information-seeking.
If someone means to direct their attention and gets distracted by an important notice, like "I mean to drive down this road, and the stop sign grabbed my attention," that's also fine. The information is relevant to the human and important for augmenting their intention. But if you download an app and try to do something, only to be met with a banner/popup/whatever informing you of other products on offer by the company? Well, they're not selling your attention to third parties, but they are monetizing it by taking your intention to use one product and attempting to redirect it into a potential purchase of another, so that's out. If you want, you can include a clearly-labelled "our other offerings" section in the app, out of the way, somewhere it would only be encountered by someone seeking it out.
Distracting people cannot be allowed to be one of the main drivers of our economy.
Commoditization of human attention is a great explanation
> the commoditization of human attention
It isn’t commoditised. It’s priced to a tee. If you can afford to keep your attention, you do.
The problem is we’ve let sociopaths like Zuckerberg and Mosseri convince us that we’re born into their servitude. That the natural order for our kids is for their attention to be stolen. That their parents have to then pay and work to buy it back.
> Distracting people cannot be allowed to be one of the main drivers of our economy.
Sure it can. Apple, Google and Microsoft get millions of impressions every day and everyone accepts it. Just because it's uncomfortable for you to think about doesn't mean that it's not happening, at-scale, this very minute.
"Cannot be allowed" means "We need to stop this" in context, not that they don't believe it's happening.
Every once in a while we need a general strike which achieves financial destruction of the corrupt who have taken the seat of power.
One that is really insane to me is Ads when driving on the highway. I can’t recall seeing that in Europe, but now in Canada when I take the highway there’s Ads everywhere. Some of them rotate.
Ironically they also have a sign that changes, one of the updates is “don’t drive distracted”… and like, I wasn’t distracted until the sign flashed at me lol.
What you are observing is the trick the industry used to get approval for changing LED billboards— they “donate” say fifteen hours per month to public service announcements. This kind of concession is gold to an ambitious public servant, the old prohibitions never stood a chance. The PSA could be “stop electronic billboards” but that was the way they got through high-friction public processes.
Good org on the other side of the issue: Scenic America: https://www.scenic.org/why-scenic-conservation/billboards-an...
My state has a neat legal trick that applies to most major highways: You can set up a big tall sign to advertise but it has to be for a product or service drivers can stop and buy on the premises.
This removes much of the incentive for spamming enormous signs and renting them out to the highest bidder. That may change if it becomes really cheap to put a functional vending machine below.
I saw many billboard ads on Portugal (Europe) highways. As a Canadian, it seemed like a lot.
Honestly. Premier Ford you listening?
As someone who is not Canadian, pretty much the only thing I know about Doug Ford is how actively against road safety Doug Ford is.
Europe has billboards too. Perhaps not everywhere, and not as bad as some other places, but it does exist, and it is infuriating. I don't think I've seen them flash intentionally, but nobody seems to be too interested in fixing broken LED bulbs.
I even saw a "you should be looking at the road" ad on one of those billboards.
Legal ads in product catalogues only. Product catalogues are actually useful and nobody is subjected to them unless they chose to seek one out and pick it up willingly.
I'm glad to hear someone else come to this as the solution for ads.
Wait, what? I'm confused. Is the entire product catalogue considered an ad? Or do you mean parts of a product catalogue can contain adverts? I'd argue a product catalogue is not advertising at all.
Anderton's (a music retailer in the UK) has an enormously popular YouTube channel (1M subs) which is basically just them demoing their stock while shooting the breeze. It's 100% an advertisement, but it's the sort that most people (including myself, who otherwise hates ads) is fine with because you have to seek it out.
This is the type of advertising I actually like.
I'm a huge buff for music gear/tech. I love seeing the newest plugins, pedals, software. I actively seek it out. I know demos of products are effectively advertisements, but they are the right type of ads and aimed at a crowd that seeks info the right way and likely is a higher probability of making a purchase.
Of course it's advertising. It's telling you about products you can buy, pushed by people who want you to buy those products, and they can pay money to be on an earlier page (we should probably ban that). But the general idea of a product catalogue shouldn't be illegal even if ads are illegal, because it's actually useful and non-invasive.
I consider each product listing in a catalogues to be ads, or perhaps the whole catalogues is one big aggregate ad. Either way, I'm fine with them. Product catalogues are mostly innocuous and usually provide more empirical product information than other forms of advertisement.
Cool, I'm fine with them too. As long as they're not mailed out without consent.
I need people to give this sort of idea more serious thought.
I honestly don't think it's an insane proposition and we've let ad companies go too far. Anything they stick their hands in gets worse, full stop.
The main arguments I hear against banning all ads is that it will hurt small businesses, a better solution might be to ban all adds for companies making above X amount per year, or even better: create systems where users pay for ads themselves, then the incentives would switch to be in favor of consumers.
In any case, totally agree, ad companies are out of control, I'm hoping more Kagi like services start appearing soon.
Banning companies above a size still allows a unhappy medium where only "small businesses" BUY the same horrible ads and we drop one or two Army or IBM ads from the lineup.
Not everything has to be black and white, there is middle ground for improvement. I'm not sure anyone loves the same MegaCorp™ ad plastered all over buildings, highways and stoplights.
The size, depth, and reach of the advertising industry is a direct result of the amount of money injected into it. The current ad industry is effective, awful, anti-competitive and resembles more of a cancer at this point than it's intended purpose to provide useful information.
No because small businesses arent hiring ad agencies who spent years studying psychology in order to manipulate people into doing what the company wants, not what the person wants. This is very much an issue of scale
That market is made when you ban "large companies" from making ads.
I thought you were being sarcastic at the start.
Vermont bans billboards on high ways. It's so nice.
My parents were architects and my sister and I lived our first few years in Honolulu before moving to the SF Bay Area. There were no billboards in Hawaii, and I recall distinctly the first drive from SFO the the East Bay. I was unable to avoid reading and staring at every billboard next to the freeway and it literally made me throw up. I didn't understand what was happening.
Of course, I was quickly conditioned off of that response to billboards, which I consider natural.
I think a decent middle ground would be to allow contextual advertising and ban personalized advertising. That is, it would be fine to show you ads based on where you are, what you are doing or what you are searching on the internet, but not based on what you did on another website or where you had lunch yesterday.
Of course this would add friction for finding the appropriate targets but it would still allow pretty decent business for adtech. it just would be a bit different.
(I'm pretty sure that the line between contextual and personalized ads is blurry, but I leave that to be solved by lawmakers and judges. Its kind of their core competence. And to be clear, what I personally think should be done would be much, much stricter ban, but this is a compromise proposal I think should be agreeable by all parties who are the slightest interested in the harm current adtech is doing)
> Time to ban all adverts everywhere.
Taxing them is an option. Disallow advertising and marketing as a deductible business expense. You can still advertise, but it comes out of the bottom line. This encourages putting more money into product value and less into promotion.
The problem isn't just "ads exist", it’s that ads have become a business model that rewards being as intrusive and manipulative as possible
This has always been the case though. They just got better tools over time.
A simpler solution is to allow the device owner to turn off ads. Ads on purchased devices should be opt-in, not default and not mandatory.
Unfortunately, the whole point is that along with the fridge/whatever tech you purchase a billboard and willingly bring ads into your home. Of course ads on purchased devices should be mandatory AND we customers will soon be expected to pay a "subscription fee" to temporarily unsubscribe from the ads. What kind of company would possibly make ads opt-in? IMO allowing the owner to turn off ads is a problem (for the company), not a solution
> What kind of company would possibly make ads opt-in?
Amazon has for years: Kindle with ads on the lock screen is $20 cheaper than without: https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Amazon-Kindle-Paperwhite-glar...
That's fine. They can simply charge for the product what it costs to make, like they always did before, and if they find that nobody uses the "enable ads" button (because why would they?) they can save some maintenance effort by removing that button. They might even find the fridge doesn't need a wifi chip and can be cheaper.
Most products are not priced to cost.
It's not as easy with some digital devices (even TVs these days), but fridges are a category where I can decisively say people who don't want ads can just buy a version without ads.
If a fridge maker wants to sell you a cheaper fridge subsidized by ads, I don't think that's a problem as long as tracking is optional.
That’s true as long as there are options that don’t have ads.
There used to be TVs that don’t have ads or tracking, but that’s not the case anymore (or so I’ve heard; haven’t bought a TV personally yet). I don’t see why fridges would be immune to that.
Smart TVs became the norm when they reached the same price point as normal TVs. That's when the ad bullshit came up. You can still buy smart TVs without ads though, going for Android TV and put it in "basic TV mode" will disable pretty much all the crapware. You won't be able to use the TV to watch Netflix or HBO without a third party streaming dongle, though, which is probably why nobody does it.
The smart part of a fridge isn't inherent to the technology necessary (unlike DRM'ed TV streams and apps). In fact, bolting the display (or ice maker for that matter) into the door makes it conduct more heat and therefore perform worse. I don't know about other economic regions, but here the energy label is quite clearly visible on the front of every fridge, so they can't hide the power waste either.
I have yet to see a smart fridge cheaper than a similar normal fridge. Partially because manufacturers seem to market this crap like a luxury feature.
The cheapest smart fridge I can find on a reliable web store, at least here, is three times the price of a normal fridge (€1500 vs €500). Even in the huge "American style" fridges, there's a sizable price difference (€1500 vs €1000) before you get to the first smart fridge.
At least with fridges a screen is extra cost to be built in.
On other hand with TVs unless you are doing just a monitor, you need something to control it. And I mean like digital TV, selecting input, possibly show some overlay or controls. And at that point just slapping a computer in it is lot faster development cycle. And then you might as well support streaming services as general population seem to want those.
I think we are about 10 years away from dumb fridges only being available from specialized catering or kitchen supply distributors. The screens are coming, they start as the 'luxury' option and then filter down to every single model.
Consider - I vehemently do not want a computer screen in my vehicle. I specifically bought a particular model in 2019 without one. If I want to upgrade, I am unable to exercise my preference though, as new cars without screens are no longer offered for sale.
There's a financial incentive if they're displaying ads or collecting and selling data.
The word for software that intentionally subverts the owners intent is called malware, and it's already illegal in the United States. We don't even need any new laws, we just need to be brave enough to enforce them.
I tend to think that banning things is almost never the right answer. Who gets to decide what counts as an ad? What's stopping governments from designating speech they don't like as an ad?
I agree with you on the total ad ban, but this has more about schizophrenia than ads. I've had to care for someone with schizoaffective disorder and she would tell me the smoke detectors were spying on us because of the red light in it, so we had to cover it with electrical tape or she would become too distressed. She told me the cats were spies with CIA microchips in them. The fridge ad is incidental -- if weren't the fridge it would have been something else.
There are billions of dollars motivated against this outcome
There are billions of lives motivated for it.
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No there aren't. There are not billions of people motivated for the total elimination of all advertisements everywhere. The vast majority of humans do not care one way or another, and most of those who dislike advertising probably wouldn't support banning them entirely.
> The vast majority of humans are not benefiting from it and are therefore motivated against it.
The vast majority of humans do not benefit from you, personally, owning a car, but that doesn't mean we're all motivated to call a towing company to your house.
>The vast majority of humans are not benefiting from it and are therefore motivated against it.
The vast majority of humans don't benefit from most things, but they are not therefore motivated against most things. That's not how motivation works.
>Also, they do care they just might not be consciously aware of the damage it causes.
So the one thing the entire human race agrees on is that advertising is evil, just unconsciously? They don't realize it but somehow you do?
No, sorry. I have assume you're trolling. Good show, you managed to annoy me.
I think, if given the conscious choice, people would choose to not have ads as they are now. The point is, that choice is not given, and most people don't know how to eliminate them from their lives, or that they even have a choice
A lot happens in the world because people are passive, or prioritize their attention on other things, not that they are "okay" with it. If it was made easy for them, they'd choose it.
Lobbying ensures such choices are taken away from people, outside of the envelop of actionability by most people.
My wife also likes ads. It drives me crazy. Half of the time she’s on instagram, she’s paging through ads. At least we have agreed to minimize our children’s exposure to ads. For example if there’s an educational show only on YouTube I will download it and they watch it offline. We will never buy a kitchen appliance with ads on it.
Back in the day, I chose to buy the Kindle with ads to save a few dollars. (I think it was $10 cheaper; looks like it's $20 now[0].) I 100% found this a worthwhile trade-off, and so did thousands of other consumers.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Amazon-Kindle-Paperwhite-glar...
True. I’m rooting for the lives as well.
Relevant read (not my own): https://simone.org/advertising/
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269
My own hypothesis is that our lives will become so saturated with ads that they will completely lose their effectiveness, advertisers and platforms will finally be forced to acknowledge that they aren't effective, and a monetization crisis will follow. Subscriptions everywhere.
It’s more like drugs in that they will be less effective , but not completely, so we will continue to get more exposures as advertisers compete for attention
Sounds like Japan.
However, their ads are crazy "in your face." They haven't given up, at all. They doubled down.
They won't lose effectiveness because once in a while you will actually find something you want, click on the ad, and buy it. The reason there's ads everywhere is because they actually do work. It's not a hypothesis.
I didn't claim what you think I did. I said that I hypothesize that they will become increasingly ineffective with time. Data already shows it's trending in that direction.
The harm they cause is so massive compared to the small amount of benefit. Everyone got along just fine when they had to go look for the things they wanted (like with a search engine!), or they did without.
> Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.
This is a terrible idea. Users should have choice & control.
I'll say something that on the surface level seems controversial, at least to HN: Some users prefer ads. And those users should be allowed that choice.
Ads are part of a value exchange. It's disingenuous, imho, to frame the question as "Do you want 'X' with or without ads?" Absent any other criteria most people would naturally say without ads. But I feel it's disingenuous because it overlooks the value exchange.
A better example: Would you prefer Netflix with ads for $7.99/month with ads, or $17.99/month without ads?
A lot of people are choosing the ads tiers. It's the fastest growing tier. Personally, I have the ads-free tier, but I can make that choice for myself. The people wanting the ads tier should be able to make that choice too. I don't see the value in taking it away from them.
I don't deny there are bad experiences. I do think Samsung is making a mistake & damaging customer trust with the refrigerator thing. I likely won't be buying one in the future.
Like anything, advertising can be done well or it can be done badly. I don't use Instagram myself, but I have a lot of friends who love fashion who do & say they're on their to follow brands & find deals. They find the ads a good way to discover some new fashion product & snag a good discount.
Likewise Amazon sent a catalog to my house. My kids are using it to think of what they want to ask Santa. A catalog is basically a book of ads.
Freedom from ads seems like a fundamental human right, and necessary for freedom of thought. "Unskippable" ads seem incompatible with freedom of thought.
> "Users should have choice & control."
Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries, some sort of severe regulation seems necessary.
> Freedom from ads seems like a fundamental human right, and necessary for freedom of thought.
This doesn't make any sense to me.
> Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries
Sure you can.
You can get a more expensive Netflix tier.
You can pay for YouTube Premium.
You can choose not engage with businesses that have a monetization model you dislike.
I'm not sure how to express this, but you're not entitled to only see things in life that you find pleasing. You might as well complain you sometimes see ugly people.
> These and other types of "unskippable ads" violate my personal freedoms and should rejected by society.
It's funny you keep bring up unskippable ads. I remember when YouTube invented the skippable ad format about ~15 years ago. How quickly it became a right & a guaranteed personal freedom.
This is one of the major political problems of the 21st century, convincing people that many of the problems they see in society are in fact free choices made by individuals, and not necessarily something that needs to be fixed from the top down. The human tendency to impose one's own preferences on others is strong, and it seems every generation needs to learn the lesson anew.
Then there needs to be stronger campaigns against addictive advertising (ironic) but we also need to enforce education about malicious advertising and marketing. People need the knowledge of how to defend themselves against advertising weapons. The current status quo is everyone for themselves. Even the too few volunteer shepherds (you) have no pull against giant money machines.
> Time to ban all adverts everywhere.
I think that is too much, but it should be almost entirely banned, with only very limited exceptions. Advertisements which you are specificailly looking for, such as catalogs for those specific things, could be one of those exceptions.
However, even regardless of these exceptions, there will need to be limits, such as: do not be dishonest, do not emit light, do not waste power, do not spy on you, do not block the view of other things, do not try to prevent you from seeing them, they cannot pay you or give you discounts for seeing the ads, etc.
> The time to negotiate a "middle ground" is long past.
I think it will need to be a "nearly banned" ground rather than the "middle" ground, though.
> Ad companies need to be reined in. They cannot control themselves.
This part I agree with.
> The only solution is [...] to make sure that anyone who gets that idea will never get it again.
But, this part, I think that won't work. Even if it does work (which it won't), it is bad for freedom of speech and freedom of opinion.
Ads are the main drivers of ruining the Internet that we once enjoyed.
I agree, ads are inserted everywhere, also hidden, and has surpassed the physiological threshold and brain barriers for a more healthy life (e.g. attention and feelings).
Ads exist because options are available. There exists the need to stand out and differentiate the moment there are more than one choice for the consumers. Commercial ads didn't exist under communism for a reason.
Your resume is ad. Cover letter is ad. Think about different word choices you made when creating your resume?
If explicit advertising doesn't exist then implicit one will. Which one is worse? I'm sure you've seen all of the product placements on movies and shows.
Product placement is already illegal unless explicitly signposted (a specific state mark being shown on the screen while it is happening) in certain types of shows, in the EU at least.
Of course we all know that submitting a list of things you can do to places that have explicitly requested such lists is the same thing as blasting your crap in front of the eyes of everyone you can. No difference at all.
This could happen with anything when someone has a mental illness. Should anything triggering also get banned?
I agree that we should also ban other forced and unannounced updates to appliances and other consumer devices, especially ones that change the UI flows, yes.
I think Advertising is the issue where I have the most radical views. I don't think it is a terribly controversial view anymore.
In the past when taking to people about this I have asked them to come up with an example of something funded by advertising that has not been corrupted by it. In recent years nobody even wants to take up that challenge, it is far more common for them to concede I'm right on that point.
It's a definite shift 8n public opinion but I'm still a bit wary when people change their views to agree with me when much of their world view seems unfounded. I don't really accept the us vs them narrative. I don't think billionaires are necessarily evil, I certainly don't think the solution to hyper-capitalism is to abandon all elements of society (which seems to be a growing belief), or that socialism an capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. I'd like people to agree with me about the properties of a thing rather than by whether proponents of it are on you tr8be or an opposing tribe.
I'd like a free society where that freedom is limited only by the harm you can do to others. Prevention of harm should be through robust and evidence based regulation.
I think there is a good case to be made that all advertising is harmful to some extent. There are certainly examples that are clearly harmful evading any form of regulation. When people break the rules that currently exist, what motivation do the6 hav3 to mitigate their behaviour? This is a failure of government. I'm not sure if adding more rules that can be broken with impunity would help.
Regulators need the power to inflict punishment that rule breakers actually feel. Enough that it is logical for even an amoral entity to obey the rules. That doesn't seem like a complicated thing, but I feel like it would go a long way healing society.
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The current admin will get right on that …
It's a worldwide issue. Even the OP link was to an UK-based subreddit.
To be clear, Dems are about as unlikely to do this as the Trump administration is. This is the sort of generational reform that requires a redefining of a political party.
I love the idea, but our whole world is built on advertising. A world without ads does not seem possible. The internet mostly works only because of advertisements.
The Internet worked before advertising.
It was different, but it was great. I would absolutely go back.
I would not go back. YouTube is a wonderful thing that I can't afford to pay for, and I don't want to live without. There are so many creators I love that would not be able to create and share beautiful things if they didn't get ad money. It's not all bad.
I agree that it's not all bad.
But if I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose no ads.
And that's only comparing "then" to "now". I'm confident that "now" will get worse in the future, making "then" all the more appealing!
I'm all for the idea of small content creators being able to afford to create their work. I wish content creation did not attract so many people who only do it for money, though. Maybe this would be achievable if the rewards were lower. Advertising sucks all the air out of the room for alternative funding mechanisms. If ads were eliminated, there would be other mechanisms.
However, back in reality, I'll concede that (e.g.) Google's massive ad revenue has given them the ability to try a thousand other things, a handful of which will be long-term valuable to the world. But the cost is immense.
That's what YouTube premium is. The fact that someone with no money gets access to all of YouTube seems like a win to me. If the only way to access was premium the world would be a worse place wouldn't it?
But you are paying for it. Do you really think Google would just provide that service for free?
The Internet has had ads since the advent of the world wide web, arguably longer.
I loved Usenet, but I also appreciated being able to have a personal webpage for free as a kid, and that was ad-supported.
The web precedes commercialization, but many tons of money were pumped into the web post-commercialization, so a lot changed quickly after that.
There were free ways to get on the net, and to host web pages, before 1995. And for many years after that, you could pay for ISP access, which would come with the ability to host pages.
We're still paying for ISP access, we just get fewer services with it. That could change.
I would too. Society would not.
I don't think this Society guy was actually asked.
> A world without ads does not seem possible. The internet mostly works only because of advertisements.
Wow you were fed that lie and you swallowed it right up. It's actually scary that you've been so thoroughly convinced that you've fallen into learned helplessness as a result. Of course it isn't impossible to have a world without ads (at least not intrusive/unwanted ones). The internet didn't have ads when it started and doesn't need them now. No, we don't have to surrender ourselves to constant abuse by adverting, or abandon entire mediums of communication just to rid ourselves of them.
What happened to the local newspaper when most advertising went broadcast or digital? There are some local newspapers who clung onto life, but without ads local print news went the way of the dodo.
Of course it's possible. We just don't have the courage to make it happen.
Ads are speech. Replace all mention of "ads" in your post with "speech I don't like" and see how it reads.
No, ads are not the same thing as free speech at all. "Free speech" is the right to say anything to anyone *who is willing to listen*. You don't have a right to come into my home and tell me your ideas about immigration policy - though you do have a right to talk about immigration policy in other places!
The government has to guarantee that there are places for people to say things. But the government does not have to guarantee that there are places for people to say things *in my own home*. And similarly, I think most public spaces should be free from ads and other 'attention pollution'. If a company wants to write about their own product, that's fine, but they must do so in a place where other people are free to seek them out, as opposed to doing so in a way that forces the writing upon others without consent.
Also porn is related to free speech.
There is no need to be a puritan against any form of pornography to expect consensus against having most addictive/eye-catching porn ostensibly displayed everywhere in the public sphere. And it’s perfectly clear that it’s actually possible to be simultaneously fine with people watching all the porn they want in their private sphere if they are warned willing adults.
If you change words in a text then the meaning changes. Even if all ads are speech (I don't think they are, but I don't need to argue that), not all speech is advertisement. You can say your piece in one of many other forms that doesn't hijack my attention.
I didn't say that all speech is ads, I said that ads are speech.
?? I know you didn’t. I don’t think my post is hard to understand. The point of freedom of speech is the free expression of ideas and opinions. You can do that in many ways. You could write a book. You could email the editor of a news website. You could write a song. In my ideal society, though, you would not be allowed to put it on a massive billboard that everyone has to look at all the time. I don’t think this curtails anyone’s freedom of speech.
Time, place, and manner restrictions already exist on speech. I'm not an anti-ad absolutist, but it would be perfectly fine by me, and most people not financially incentivized otherwise, to place time, place, and manner restrictions on ads. I'd love a blanket ban on billboards, for example.
There needs to be a distinction between "free speech" and "bought speech".
The term free speech is misleading. It is really freedom of speech. I.e. someone who says something doesn't have to be afraid of prosecution because of what they said.
It isn't the speech that is being protected it is the person who says it.
Using the term "free speech" creates those weird scenarios where now we have someone argue that the US Constitution mandates ads to be everywhere.
> Ads are speech.
Companies should have more limited speech than individuals. Nerfing the concept of “corporate personhood” will be a key part of fixing our problems IMHO.
Underaged porn is speech. Replace all mention of “underaged porn” in your post with “speech I don’t like” and see how it reads.
Certainly you can see the difference between that and advertising.
Dov Charney couldn't.
Nope. Something only a person benefiting from such cancer that ad business is would say that (and there are tons of those here on HN lets be honest, better half of faangs has ad-paid ultra high salaries and bonuses).
Ultimately its just another manipulation to part you with your money in other ways than you intended, nothing more and nothing less.
Ads are speech until they are intrusive, until they track you across websites, until they violate your privacy.
It's one thing to have a block of HTML dedicated to ads, and another to have YOUR shit running on my machine WITHOUT my consent.
It is with your consent.
You continue to visit these websites.
If you don’t want their code running on your machine, simply don’t send a GET request.
You’re allowed to use an adblocker.
Sounds like to you the use of the internet is worth the risk of being tracked.
Sounds like the risk of seeing an advertisement is probably worth the benefit of using the internet then.
Ads are not speech. Money is not speech. The map is not the territory.
Not all speech should be allowed.
> But who decides what is legal then?
Laws and judges.
That's the case currently! What I said is why those laws and judges don't ban advertising!
... written and appointed, respectively, by the worst politicians you can imagine.
Ah yes, a great point. We must protect the freedom to heap shit on other humans
So the US government can't punish you for speaking, and they can't punish someone else for speaking on your behalf. They can, however, punish you for speaking in exchange for money, speaking words you don't believe (advertising, lying). They can punish you for trying to brainwash people (the difference between advertising and propaganda is who is speaking and what they get from it, and why). They can punish you for forcing others to listen to your words (my neighbor playing music at night). They can punish you for making unfair deals. Most of this is not usually applied to private speech, but the right to free speech does not prevent it. You cannot be punished for attempting to speak in general, however there are absolutely limits.
Ads really aren't that bad. Targeted ads may even help you discover products you'll enjoy.
The ad in the article is pretty obviously an ad to anyone that can read the words, "New Series. Start Watching".
Ads like these that randomly display during idle is hardly what I consider invasive.
Hopefully OP's sister gets her mental health under control, but I wouldn't immediately raise pitch forks to ban an entire industry vital to the economy and business-consumer communication.
> hardly what I consider invasive
This is an ad in someone's kitchen in their home. How can it get more invasive?
And a banner ad may display on a laptop in your home, what's your point? Location or device type matters not. This ad doesn't interrupt the user or demand any attention.
> And a banner ad may display on a laptop in your home
I call this invasive too. That is why I use uBlock.
> This ad doesn't interrupt the user or demand any attention.
Tell that to anyone with ADHD.
I am now appreciating the spectrum of ad acceptance. I am closer to the "billboards shouldn't be allowed" end of the spectrum.
An ad sitting on a screen in my personal space sounds like a dystopian novel.
We have AI deepfake celebrities selling boner pills on YouTube.
Ads absolutely are that bad
Why should one have to endure the intrusion? Why does every product need adverts as it seems to be the place society is going? They are that bad and their place is only potentially in the places that people are looking for said products.
When every product has adverts, is it a choice any longer? Even finding devices, like TV's without ads is more difficult( no on is advertising them :) ) and paying more is often not an option.
That phrasing, tho:
Hopefully OP's sister gets her mental health under control...
Not: Hopefully we get control over risking OP's sister's mental health
There are NO ads that are good. I will die on this hill
Awareness ads. See breast cancer awareness, vaccination etc.
Don't want businesses to communicate with me, thanks. So entitled!
Wasn't the refrigerator trying to communicate with her the best way it could?
No wonder people could think it's trying to do that, because it's true.
>mistakes smart fridge ad for psychotic episode (reddit.com)
OTOH, when you put it like that it would also be easy to get the idea that your fridge was the one having the psychotic episode ;)
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I read [Unauthorized Bread (exerpt) by Doctoro](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...) this year which was pretty approachable read on the topic. Not severely interesting or mind blowing if you're already here hopefully but did make me wonder how I could sneak it into my mums reading list.
I borrowed from the library last month. It was thought provoking and I think it's aimed at younger people than myself.
"I just saw something incredibly cool! A big floating ball that lit up with every color in the rainbow, plus some new ones that were so beautiful I fell to my knees and cried."
"Was it out in front of Discount Shoe Outlet?"
"Yeah..."
"They have a college kid wear that to attract customers."
"Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
"Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!"
It's a pretty big coincidence that the thing that someone mentioned in passing about in this earlier post[1] happened to come true some days later, from a 4-day-old Reddit account.
The legal advice subreddits are, unfortunately, often the target of some creative writing exercises. I feel like this is probably one, but acknowledge we'll never know for sure.
Either way it's a terrible ad and fridges shouldn't have ads.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
An edge case of "smart" tech...
As an aside, having scroll that thread, Reddit is a shambles. There's more deleted comments and related justification comment than actual comments. Make for a jarring experience.
It's a legal advice subreddit; they tend to have stricter moderation because their primary goal is to get the OP an answer to their question or advice on how to consult a legal professional about their issue. Posts like the one linked here tend to be a magnet for people more interested in the drama than the actual legal principles, so they end up being a wasteland of removed comments.
Exactly. There are reasons for those many deleted comments. It's specific to this subreddit for very good reasons and not something you can use to disparage all of reddit. Many subreddits have their own rules and culture.
It's not disparaging to point out a fact. The whole delete comment content but keep the comment and then add a reply comment with wordy reason for deletion of comment content is a shambles. And irrespective of whether it's on every subreddit or not, doesn't make it less so. It's basically just spam at this point.
My solution would be to simply delete the comment and PM the OP. If another user had already replied, replace the original content with a *short* reason for deletion, and PM the OP, leaving the replies in place unless they needed deleting.
It's a recursive issue, and this is something that Reddit could potentially improve. Reddit preserves a deleted comment's space in the comments section as [deleted]. Users who see a graveyard of deleted comments will comment to wonder why, especially if they are unfamiliar with the subreddit rules. This may require the mods to delete more off-topic comments, which worsens the issue, etc. So the established "best practice" is to delete but leave a moderator comment with an explanation so there's a paper trail.
It's fairly representative of reddit as a whole. Sure not all subreddits are this bad all the time but as soon as something comes up where people might have thoughts that the mods don't approve of...
Another example: r/AskHistorians is so heavily moderated almost every comment gets deleted.
Their standards of quality are very high. It's not a sub to push your views or argue, it's a sub for historians or people who can back an answer with academic references. So most comments and answers will get modded.
It's oddly refreshing. No flamewars, no junk comments, no "everybody knows the reason X did Y is Z" because that won't be accepted by the mods.
It's not perfect, but it's good enough.
AskHistorians is far and away the best moderated sub on the site, but it relies entirely on guidelines that you can understand and agree with. Moderation on other subs (no clue about this one) is so heinously biased it makes them unusable. Very common on political and news oriented subs....
Absolutely- I can't understand why it still has such a loyal base considering how low the quality is- I see more insightful discussion on facebook half the time
Because Reddit != Reddit and each subreddit has their own audience and moderation style. Most of Reddit might be a cesspit, but that doesn't mean all of it is.
I can't understand why cigarettes have such a loyal fanbase. They're smelly and expensive. Costing roughly 4k a year, I can't understand why someone wouldn't buy a nicer car or massive TV or something.
Whenever a platform is popular these days I just assume it is more addictive.
It's a long long, sad fall from when websites used to be popular primarily because they were insightful, cool or creative
Which is very on topic because being addictive is all that's needed to succeed in the ad-funded world.
Well op is comparing one cigarette to another, expanding your metaphors. And they're both "free".
Free, sure, if your privacy has no value.
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10 paragraphs later
You are now fully educated on this threads rules, please revisit the top of the thread to remember why to came here in the first place.
I was in a car accident a few years ago that triggered my pre-existing PTSD, so it was a very rough experience. This experience was made worse by the fact that my insurer apparently sold the fact I had been in a crash to third-parties. I could not go anywhere on the internet without seeing personal injury ads, which often featured gratuitous pictures of crashes. This felt incredibly creepy and made a bad experience much worse.
On the day Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, I started getting Youtube ads for silencers and tactical gear. I guess it follows that people were searching for those sort topics then and I fit some cohort (probably "angry young male"), but it was very unnerving.
Now Youtube mostly shows me ads for fake AI generated products and other scams.
If you have a router you control, many routers allow you to take away internet access from a device while keeping it on your local network. Some (all?) Asus routers can do this from their UI.
This won’t help with devices that require 24x7 internet access, but it’s great for things you want to access the local network but don’t trust not to send info to a third party. (TVs, music amps with built in streaming, home surveillance systems [1], etc.)
Also handy for briefly turning on Internet access for software updates or one time activation.
[1] while making a surveillance system available online safely and with software you control isn’t hard, it’s not trivial. Turning Internet access off for your cameras without a plan will mean you can’t monitor your home or get alerts when away from your local network.
I know this is the sort of story HN would love to be true (and to be clear, I think ads on appliances are Black Mirror level stuff), but this — like most things on Reddit — is made up. [1]
This story, while fun to discuss, should be flagged, and not on the FP of HN.
You sure about that?
https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
I’m not arguing that Samsung has built in ads.
I’m saying this particular story was fabricated. There is evidence in the comments below my linked thread, specifically the one to MacRumors from Samsung, that prove why this was fabricated.
Someone predicted this exact thing is your evidence it's fiction?
How much meaningful experience do you have with psychosis and mental illness?
That thread goes into how Samsung has confirmed that this ad can’t show up like it did [1]. There are many comments in that thread debunking this. Which is why I linked the whole thread, not a single comment.
When something posts something on Reddit that sounds far fetched (fun to believe, but unlikely), we (the HN community) should default to skepticism/critical thinking, rather than assuming it’s true without evidence that it is.
>has confirmed that this ad can’t show up like it did
While this certainly may be true, I trust companies to tell the actual truth about this when it's been verified by an independent 3rd party.
So much of the "This can't happen", "We didn't scan and save all your wireless network names", "We didn't copy all the contacts in your address book" quite commonly break down later when it is realized that some sub-group doing an A/B test or keeping their work somewhat hidden actually did the thing in question.
> When something posted on Reddit that sounds far fetched (fun to believe, but unlikely), we should default to skepticism/critical thinking, rather than assuming it’s true without evidence that it is.
That's my point. This doesn't sound at all far fetched if you've spent time with people recovering from psychosis with visual hallucinations.
I'm normally a very skeptical person, and while I both agree claims require evidence. I don't find the comment thread from before very compelling evidence.
Fake or not, I do believe that an ad with the text from the troll image would show up on a smart fridge, I don't trust Samsung to tell the truth^1, and importantly the minimal description from the linked post describes an experience similar to one I've seen before working with a patient. (But from a print ad.)
Even if this exac is fiction, this kinda stuff actually happens. Perhaps I'm wrong, to believe it's plausible, but dismissing it outright is a mistake. You don't want to acknowledge hallucinations are real, but more important than that, you don't want to tell someone that they're lying without positive proof.
edit ^1: I read that exactly prior to reading your reply, and yes I do agree that explanation seems to be correct; that wasn't what I was basing my take on. i.e. true or not it's less important to my original objection. Or I find it plausible than even a small advert would result in the same event.
> Fake or not, I do believe that an ad with the text from the troll image would show up on a smart fridge, I don't trust Samsung to tell the truth^1
I trust them more than some reddit post. Samsung has at least some incentive to tell the truth (they don't want to piss off consumers). What's the penalty for lying on Reddit?
As a schizotypal person, I'm unsure how more people aren't exhibiting paranoid schizophrenic symptoms in this wildly untrustworthy digital age.
Yesterday a good friend reached out to me on a new phone number to wish me happy holidays, she shortly afterwards asked me to donate to a fund to help her sick cat.
Even though this person had a similar typing style, the unrecognized phone number made me feel paranoid that it may be an LLM attempting to get money from me in an automated scam, so I made the choice to call my friend to get more evidence via voice.
It turned out to be my friend(or an even more elaborate ruse using voice capture and mass data-mining tech, but that seemed extremely unlikely, at least for another couple years).
My brother had full on shizpphrenia, and would often call family members asking them to provide evidence that they are who they say they are and not government robots. It was an obvious delusion when he was alive, but now that we're in a world where that sort of evidence-gathering is no longer extreme, paranoia is the new normal.
Our usual safeguards of identity are breaking down, and you can bet that large corporations with an eye on the coin are going to swoop in to establish new, more secure methods of identification.
>swoop in to establish new, more secure methods of identification.
This is already being done. However it is being done in backroom deals to make sure that the individual has no control over their identity only the corporations. You are not who you say you are, you are what a corporation decides you are.
Plaid is a huge player in this space.
Society, in a sense, is highly dependent on trustworthy interactions. Credit, ownership transfers, banking, etc. all depend on trust. If we go back to only being able to trust in-person interactions, we'll be stepping back to a financial system from over 100 years ago.
Because of this, I believe that solutions will be developed. Nothing is 100% fool-proof, but the government depends on a solution being found.
I don't understand why people willingly pay thousands for these fridges. Just buy a regular fridge without the screen.
Because their old fridge died and they need a new one now, and this is all that's in stock.
Because they didn't buy the fridge, their landlord did.
Because the fridge is installed at a workplace, or community centre, or other location at which the individual has no effective choice.
Because there are no new fridges with other desired features which don't have screens.
Because, at some future date, absent legislation or crushing litigation, no non-screen, ad-free fridges exist.
Substitute for "fridge" and "ads" any of number of other consumer / general appliances: stoves, washing machines, dishwashers, phones, televisions, thermostats, doorbells, petrol pumps, etc., or features: cameras, microphones, speakers, iris scanners, thumbprint readers, facial recognition, etc., etc.
I recently tried this for a new TV - buying a regular “non-smart” TV without the internet features without being “AI-enabled” (whatever the fuck that means).
It wasn’t possible - there was literally no TV available that didn’t have a small computer built in to connect to the internet and send all my usage data somewhere.
I probably have to find a second hand one somewhere or just continue to live without one.
Not saying that it’s the same with fridges - but who knows a few years down the line it might be…
I never understand this type of refrain. Why connect the TV to the Internet?
I have yet to run into a TV that doesn't work entirely offline at any pricepoint
What is the point of a smart TV though?
What do you mean exactly? Some people like being able to watch YouTube and Netflix without utilizing a third party device.
The tv also has a microprocessor to upscale/decode content. Most tvs also have the ability to connect to a variety of sound systems through Bluetooth.
If your concern is additional cost for the bundled features, I believe the ads subsidize and offset the cost. (I'm not pro ad. Again, I do not connect my tv to the Internet, but let's not reject the benefits entirely).
"Non smart" TVs are prohibitively expensive in my experience. They are large format monitors. You can also consider a projector.
While you still can..
"I don't understand... just..." is almost never helpful in these situations.
I searched for this comment for a long time, it should be the first one.
FYI, the slogan ""WE'RE SORRY WE UPSET YOU, CAROL" on a yellow background is from the Apple TV Show "Pluribus" (Or "PLUR1BUS"). It would be an ad for that show. It is indeed creepy at times.
The main character is called "Carol". As also, it seems is the person who saw it here.
I knew using ad blockers is good for your mental health but this is plain creepy and unfair. Especially when advertisers know more and more about you as more and more everyday items are spying on you and serve you ads without any additional core functionality. Appliances don't get better, they are getting creepier to increase the return of investment for the manufacturers. The schizophrenics are just more sensitive to this enshittification of everyday items because they are quick to assume deliberate agency in chaotic events where there is none. But this is changing, for everybody.
The problem is today you can't really tell anymore whether this "Carol" the ad was addressing is the advertiser knowing that it's your name or just a random "clever" reference to a character in the TV show, I mean even after getting the resolution that it's the latter, nobody can be sure if this excludes the former, like the algorithm decided to send Carol an ad about a show with a Carol in it. It's not good to have to make up your mind about it even when you are not suffering from schizophrenia.
It's annoying, it's intrusive, it wastes your time and ruins your day. And it makes you hate your new tech, makes you hate tech in general, because it's a big "fuck you we can do what we want with you now" towards the customers. No wonder Luddites are making a come back, that's just self-defense.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you.
In fact, they're after you for being so paranoid.
Stallman was right.
He was right that people would make up fake scenarios on a social media platform for karma points about a device that nobody needs to buy?
Stallman didn’t even conceive of this threat. Would it be any better if it was an open source dystopian mind-control machine?
Open source, as in corporate outsourcing software maintenance to free labour? No. Free software, as in four freedoms? Yes, because you could install your own firmware that doesn't show advertisements.
That's what the whole GPLv3 debacle was about after all.
Stallman may have not imagined this specific scenario, but he absolutely did conceive of owner-hostile software that could not be replaced.
You could, but would most people? Most people voluntarily subject themselves to garbage adware-ridden SmartTVs even though this is a problem you can solve with a £12 dongle and no software installation at all. If the humble HDMI cable defeats the average person’s technical ability, what difference would it make if they could technically install their own firmware?
Fine, but I don't care about the average person. _I_ do not want this junk in my life. I don't deserve to be treated this way. If everyone else want to be manipulated by their fridge, thats one's on them, but count me out. It doesn't matter _if_ you install your own firmware, but _if you have the right to do so_. I don't own a gun, but I still believe that owning a firearm is a human right.
Theoretically, yes, but in practice almost everybody would just run their Ubuntu Fridge in a stock configuration.
Stallman conceived of the threat that if you let companies control your computer, they'll use it to their benefit and your detriment.
Sometimes you don’t need a Stallman to be right.
Yet there is a Stallman anyway.
If there is one appliance in my house that does not need a LCD screen and «smart» features, it’s my fridge. It was installed maybe 6 years ago, I adjusted some temperature settings and I’ve never touched the dials again.
It does not need neither screens nor chips, one knob mounted to thermo relay is self-descriptive.
Need might be a bit much but I think I would benefit from the fridge tracking expiry dates and reminding me to use up groceries before they go bad. Having a place in the kitchen to show digital recipes is also not useless.
I don't trust any tech company to provide this without fucking it up with ads or other dark patterns though so I too still have a screen-less fridge.
Reads like something out of Philip K. Dick’s writing. Fridges with ads. Talking doors.
If modern ad tech and future holographic display technology makes schizophrenic symptoms indistinguishable from regular waking consciousness in our Bitchun society...does that make us all crazy? or all sane?
When I first saw somebody complain about the Pluribus smart fridge ad I immediately knew something like this was going to happen. How did Apple/Samsung not think this through?
They probably do not care if they're not legally liable.
if you read the entire reddit thread, OPs sisters name actually was Carol. That's why it wigged her out so much and triggered her schizophrenia to kick in I suppose.
I know, that's what I originally thought.
On a very related note, I've been seeing a lot of what I coined as "schizophrenic design" in technology over the past 10 years. I started using this term to describe technology making you question yourself or the state of the system.
Did I just get shadowbanned or does no one find my posts interesting? Am I shadowbanned or are my posts just deranked but still visible? Why does changing my profile picture trigger me to now require a phone to continue using the website? Did it mark me as a spambot or is this a normal sign up procedure? Did I get banned or did the group get deleted? Did I really forget to untick that "I'd like to receive marketing" checkbox?
I can't really put my thumb on it. Now imagine this stuff with personalization and algorithms that know you're pregnant before you do. If anything, food intake is probably a very high quality signal on biological changes such as pregnancy.
If you don't control the technology, the technology controls you.
Don’t buy appliances with anything but a small screen. Any large screen on any appliance will be used to show ads. If not now then eventually.
It’s also a gimmick, and gimmicks on things like appliances and cars are red flags for poor quality. Appliances in particular are best when simple and designed for their function. “Feature” means “thing that will break.”
This is a fabricated story/made up post, see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
“EDIT 2: Hello, I am the original poster of the carol AD image from a month ago. I am a male from America and my name is not Carol. The story about a Schizophrenic woman named carol was most likely fabricated from the 3rd top comment on this post. Thanks!”
Fake Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1pc7999/my_s...
This is obviously reddit fiction.
IANAL, but could the ADA [1] or equivalent laws be applied to such a situation?
If it was up to a jury, the creepy ads might not get much sympathy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
Given the situation occurred in the UK, I doubt it.
I think The Equality Act 2010 would be the UK equivalent. No idea whether it would cover this - might be a stretch.
Everyday we take one step closer to a PKD envisioned future.
> “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
From Ubik
That scene is exactly what I had in mind :-)
Such a wonderful book.
One of my favorite PKD novels. Thanks for the reminder of it!
Better tip the smart door, never know what’ll happen if there’s a fire someday.
Speaking of, better tip the toaster.
The Internet of [spiteful] Things.
made an account just to note that when reddit fanfic is reaching the front-page, we might be on the downslope and it's sad
Your concern is not that refrigerators display ads, or that Apple is goading schizoaffective people, but that Reddit is lying?
You're right, this website is headed on the down slope and your comment proves it perfectly.
Hard to get a man to understand something, dot dot dot.
I know this isn’t Just a Samsung problem, but it’s sure not Not a Samsung problem either. Samsung’s taken the early-00’s Sony crown of most anti-consumer company out there - don’t buy Samsung.
this post is a meme (or an attempt to shed light at the problem) referencing a video by louis rossmann who foreshadows that something like this could hypothetically happen
I simply can't fathom why anyone would spend extra money on a "smart" fridge. Let alone one that shows ads. Why would you even want one of those?
These companies have no decency. Putting ads on a fridge! They’ve already invaded our phones and computers, and almost everywhere else. This needs to stop
Every time I see an article on HN about a "smart" device doing shitty things, my first thought is why would someone (especially from this crowd, who's supposed to be enlightened about the state of enshittification of tech) buy any IoS device in the first place ?
What good could you expect from an appliance that's permanently communicating with its non-giving a f*ck about users, profit driven, immoral and unethical mothership ? Would you really expect your life to be better after buying such a product ?
There's an old joke that a tech enthusiast will have "smart" everything in their house, while someone who works in tech keeps a shotgun in case their 10 year old laser printer makes a funny noise...
It's not a joke, it's just an observation.
I work in the IoT industry and delight in making things work automatically.
I live in a log cabin in the back woods with minimal technology and drive an older car with actual knobs and physical switches for controls because I've seen how the sausage is made.
Steve Jobs + Iphone for his kids.
The real fun one - most rental places, the landlord buys/provides the fridge.
Are we at ad-supported rental apartments yet? “Sorry, it’s in the rental contract that we’re not allowed to turn off the TV or cover it up.”
On the double-plus-good side there's often a corner of the room where the TV can't see you . . .
Is that really the case? Even with furbished kitchens the fridge is often something the tenant owns IME and rentals with unfurnished kitchens are not that uncommon here.
it should read, "Schizophenic correctly diagnoses societies ongoing pschcotic episode through the phenominon of refrigerator advertising"
there hasn't been a single schizophrenia diagnosis for a born blind person
What is the probability of being born blind?
What is the probability of having schizophrenia?
What is the probability of both?
What is the probability of both + having resources to have it diagnosed?
Some quick numbers:
1/2500 .. What is the probability of being born blind?
1/100 .. What is the probability of having schizophrenia?
1/250000* .. What is the probability of both?
1/250000* .. What is the probability of both + having resources to have it diagnosed?
So, in the US:
340MM people -> 1360 born-blind people who would develop schizophrenia
So call it 700 people in the US alone. If it is in fact zero, that is significant!
I chose the US because 100% people will have adequate access to this level of medical care. A formal diagnosis is not the same thing as access, but a born-blind person either has parents/family, or has a state warden with access to care. This is also true in many many other countries, but certainly not all.
The US has 4.1% of the world population. Figure 50% of the world does not have this level of medical access. It's probably less than that, but maybe not.
This suggests about 10,000 people worldwide, living today, who would be affected, and in an environment where they would be diagnosed.
and what is the probability of deaths of Alternative for Germany party members?
whoa, that's a really neat and cool fact. I never knew this.
for the curious, https://www.healthcentral.com/condition/schizophrenia/blindn...
Wonder why (I don't wonder why)
I remember when borderline/schizoid fren saw some stuff made by one of the first generative models released to the public, Deep Dream.
I hadda smack that laptop shut, my fren froze catatonic from looking at those dog-shaped landscapes
The gut reaction of too many geeks is "I can't believe you'd install a smart fridge in your home". But we need to think about this differently. Imagine if vehicles had no mandatory safety checks. How many people know anything about car safety? You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse. We are the professionals. It's our responsibility to keep the public safe and stop shit like this happening. The software engineers who implemented this at Samsung should be struck off. Well, we could start by having something to be struck off from. I'm done with assuming individual developers will be scrupulous. We need real consequences to come from higher up. It's way past the point that this is fucking with people's lives.
> You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse.
You have this in most of the US, and people rail against any attempt to bring it in because they're frightened that garages will not give them their cars back if they think it's got something wrong with it.
I've seen people driving cars in the US that you wouldn't even be able to get a scrapyard to take in the UK, they'd tell you to just sweep it into a bag and put it in the recycling.
It also falls apart over when more and more products become "smart" to the point where you can't really even buy one without things like this, like TVs now or cars for that matter. I'm dreading the day where I end up forced to watch an ad before starting my car.
I do think some kind of ethics training/education/licensing/organization is long overdue for software devs.
It's the smug superiority too many "tech smart" people have.
"Why would you buy HP? Everyone knows that it stands for Horrible Product."
"Serves you right for getting a TV with built in Netflix, everyone knows that it's a backdoor to botnet!"
I don't think it's apologetics for dogpoop corporate behavior, directly. But it has that effect because those of us with knowledge enjoy being smart asses or belittling those whose ignorance rewards trends we disagree with.
People should be able to go into a store and buy a thing without researching how evil it has become in the decade or two since the last time they did. Or move into a house pre-furnished. That is a failure of legislatures, not of average Joe.
Real consequences from higher up... for ads on a fridge? Corporate execs only care about money. Engineers aren't going to get themselves fired every time someone asks for a feature they don't agree with. Government? We don't need more nanny laws.
What we need is for people to think for themselves. The powers that be aren't going to save you from all the bad things. Call out the bad things to educate people, and vote with your wallet.
There's a whole growing class of people that do not have the ability to vote with their wallet. Fridges, TVs etc will all be at their cheapest because they're subsidized by ads. Or worse, if you're a renter then there's a big incentive for apartments to put up smart fridges in every room both as a selling point and for ad revenue.
How would you propose to deal with apartments having every fridge be a smart one?
I'll admit, I hadn't thought of subsidized fridges. What a bleak and depressing idea! I suppose I'd just tape over the screen or "accidentally" break it and complain to my landlord.
> What we need is for people to think for themselves.
I hope you never go see a doctor or take your car to a garage. Just think for yourself, bro.
Not discounting mental health effects of advertising assault, but both of those things can have direct life-threatening impact, so I'm not sure they're a valid comparison to choosing a refrigerator. You don't even need certification to be an auto-mechanic in my country. That said, the previous response about subsidized refrigerators forced me to reconsider the issue as a purchasing choice.
I still don't think it's realistic to expect the software engineers implementing questionable features to refuse to do so, or be punished for following orders. Sure some might choose to quit and work elsewhere, but their seat will be filled by someone else.
If it's not a consumer choice issue, in a future where most refrigerators are subsidized by ads, I could see a case for regulation, but my hopes are low tbh. We already have ads everywhere, so why would an appliance like a fridge or washing machine get special treatment? Personally I'd love a world where there's no ads except in dedicated opt-in places, both physical and digital. I have zero faith I'll ever see that.
How do you propose we stop our impending doom? Where are your proposed consequences coming from? I think this is an interesting social issue, I'm open to having my mind changed, and I'm trying to have a real discussion, but if you've just got more snide "bro" comments, we can leave it here.
I agree the industry needs to grow up. The YOLO move fast, what tests, what security, sucks. I'm having a hard time seeing your vision of individually licensed professionals though. I hear what you're saying, but it seems totally unrealistic IMO.
Your comparisons (pharmacist, nurse, electrician) are all part of specific regulated industries, in roles where the individual's actions can mean life or death. Software engineers, and the greater IT domain, cover an incredibly wide area, reaching into most other industries. Most of these people have very little chance of directly influencing a life or death situation.
Say you take a subset of software folks, create a regulated standard for licensing your real professionals, they get ethics and safety training, take tests, get certs, etc.. They're hopefully good, quality engineers, perhaps sought after by regulated industries. How are those individuals going to stop ads in your fridge? It's not their call. A business dude at Samsung or whoever is going to pitch the latest invasive ad idea with projected revenue, execs will smell profit and direct engineering to implement. Unless there's regulation of the home appliance industry or the advertising industry, Samsung won't give a shit about hiring your expensive licensed engineers for the job.
I don't know what you're talking about regarding perfect consumer knowledge in a free market. To my understanding, a free market is just dynamic pricing based on supply and demand and competition between sellers, but I'm not particularly educated in economics. Regardless, you don't need perfect knowledge to be informed or make a purchasing decision.
I replied to your original post because it's common sentiment I see often, where outrage sparks an appeal to some authority to fix things, which I find frustrating because it's often not actionable or realistic. I applaud the spirit of your call to the community to do better, but I don't agree with your specifics and the vague wish for consequences from above.
Our views aren't completely incompatible though, you're angry, I'm angry, and we're talking about it which is a win in my book. I'm promoting a different type of grassroots resistance, but by all means fight the fight to enact your vision of regulation somehow.
I recently downloaded an app to use my smartphone screen as a reading light.
So a simple app that lets you control the color and brightness of the screen.
You only find this with adds on the play store and it shares your data with 3. parties as well as permanently showing an add banner.
This isn't progress, it's broken.
I found a couple of ad free apps within seconds.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.wearefamil...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.vixen.ni...
Is there a certain must-have feature you're looking for?
Great, thank you. How do you query in a way to find the ad free apps?
This is fake and based on this earlier post to Reddit. Someone just karma farming
I just hope the sister gets some peace and that her doctors take this as an environmental trigger
The actual ad: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/s/YD4vBNXfLY
Too bad for the backslash, it’s a great show.
Apple's ad department hasn't exactly been knocking them out of the park lately.
At least the fridge didn't play the video version.[1]
HN baited by karma farmers once again.
Here's the /r/assholedesign post: https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
It shows a webpage with an ad being displayed in the browser app.
How do we know?
Full-screen ads don't show on the cover screen (home screen).
Here's the investigation:
https://9to5google.com/samsung-smart-fridge-ads-how-to-turn-...
>Any ad shown would be limited to the cover screen widget, which displays news, weather, and calendar events.
>The ad shown in the Reddit photo is of the fridge’s Samsung Internet app. Through that, an ad seems to have shown up organically through a third-party website.
Here's the docs that talk about ads on the cover screen:
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS10007562/
It's easy for ragebait to short-circuit your critical thinking skills.
Don't let Redditards like /u/Shellnanigans get their fix.
Well they might want to produce some photos or screenshots of what it actually looks like when it displays ads. So far, they are only telling us what it doesn't look like, which doesn't instill much confidence. It should have been pretty easy for them to say "and here's what it actually looks like btw: [photo.jpg] [screenshot.png]". They didn't do that though. Why might that be?
Here's an actual Samshit fridge cover screen with the new ad widget:
https://www.androidauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/...
Here's a GIF of it rotating through the modes:
https://www.androidauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/...
Here's the source article:
https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-smart-fridge-ad-upd...
Now where do I get my 10% commission on /u/Shellnanigans's 67,135 internet points?
Reddit used to be free for anyone to view without logging in, but now I get "Your request has been blocked due to a network policy." Sorry, but I'm not turning my ad blocker off.
It would be best to ban advertising on things that didn't advertise before, especially in people's homes where the effects can't be seen.
These targeted ads are incredibly harmful when you have to take care of someone with psychosis. They think that someone who is listening to them is sending them "messages" through ads and that feeds into paranoia. Unfortunately it is not possible to reason in such situations with the person and any attempt to explain tracking is met with hostility.
I really wish regulators stopped being corrupt, naive or both and outright made it illegal.
There is no upside for tracking of any kind for consumers.
Í'm not sure we should be treating posts from Fun-Blueberry-2147 on r/LegalAdviceUK as actual news items.
Agreed. What an actual journalist would do to make it a news item would be to start with tracking down and interviewing the actual people supposedly involved. Basic verification and fact checking, the grunt work of journalism. If it still exists, it's an endangered species.
In the golden era of advertising (don’t really know but say before the iPhone) there was no “opt-out”. If you wanted to watch Lucille Ball, rich or poor you had to sit through the ads. If you wanted to read the New York Times article, rich or poor, you had to turn the full page ad over.
Today that’s gone - you can for a fee never see an advert again. And that fee is easier to pay if you are rich, and harder if poor. And so more and more “traditional” advertising will become aggressive and aimed at both lower income audience and more scammy products (because you are selling to the poorest you cannot beat costs eventually). And advertising will stop being about “brand” (which are naturally less aggressive and focused on closing) and more about the last click to sale.
We are already seeing this world take shape, as “influencers” become the way to reach those who have paid to stop all other advertising, and why travel influencers are head of that pack.
Ultimately this is about design of our public spaces. We rightly celebrate architects, civil engineers and their sponsors who create enjoyable and beneficial built areas - we have still to get a hold of the digital public spaces. While Times Square has a quality of its own, living there permanently would have mental health issues for most of us.
And in the end, positive public spaces are associated with the words paternalism, socialism, public good and none with Toll, extraction, rentierism.
The arguments against ads are arguments for paternalism of government control for a better life for us all.
This story and the discussion here highlights how useful X's community notes can be
I wish ads were allowed to only state facts, and that in a non-misleading context.
No, scrap the Ministry for Truth as well - those are just as much about manipulation as companies wanting you to buy shit you don't need.
Next up: <blink> tags on fridge triggers seizures
Back in the day we asked webmasters to run their web sites through Bobby for accessibility checks.
I am curious if any LLM work like this is being done. If it were really a smart fridge, it would moderate its users content appropriately. Eg I don’t want haram ads, don’t freak me out, I’m color blind.
Given what that ad said, I can hardly blame her. That must have been horrifying.
Imagine if advertisers were directly responsible for cleaning up after themselves. For newspapers, they'd need to recycle the equivelent amount of paper their ads take up in all papers distributed. For ads on digital devices, an amount of processing power equivalent to the amount used to display them all would be user for a good cause (say folding). Or even just the same amount of electrical power used could be donated to a good cause. And for incidents like this, the company would be directly liable and bound to clean up.
Or we could just ban them and also get rid of the long list of other downsides with ads.
im glad the minds here figured it to be fake as well. makes me have a little bit of hope for this world.
Careless people
I love technology but avoid all the smart stuff because it's all shit, all spyware, all will eventually show ads. Its a perversion of something that could have been so nice.
I have Philips Hue lights, it started out great, now every time I open that app it slaps an ad in my face. I paid hundreds of euros for that system. Never again.
the end of HN when reddit fanfic reaches the frontpage
the end of HN when every comment is parroting the same thing
>implying HN was ever good
I, for one, welcome our new fridge overlords. Might I also remind them that I can be useful in rounding up, hoarding, if you will, other humans for fridge-related activities thanks to my 39-year experience with ice, frozen fruits, etc.
File suit.
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Yeah… she’s not wrong.
If you want to put an end to this you’ll either need to boycott products, make your own, or get something serious passed to abolish a good chunk of ads. This industry is loaded with money and they reinforce their own (see: ads on fridges) so good luck. It’s a tough battle.
Oh, and there are no roadway ads in Vermont.
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The YouTube equivalent is SponsorBlock:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sponsorblock-for-yo...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/
And the smart fridge equivalent is either PiHole, or.. not buying a smart fridge.
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Unless this is satire, one of the most frightening comments I have read here in a while. Not because of any intended malice, but precisely because of its very absence in advocating something that is the psychological version of eugenics. Much like the Formics in Ender's Game (or the protomolecule in the Expanse), the scariest type of monster is the one that genuinely has no malicious intent, but simply cannot comprehend our individuality, our desire to live and be free, and our fear of pain.
If it is satire, it's very good. They pointed out exactly how their proposed dystopia is consistent with policies that already exist.
Withholding autonomy from anyone with a diagnosed mental/neurodevelopmental disorder or an IQ below 100 is the logical conclusion of banning drugs, alcohol, or prostitution. It's all the product of a mindset which presumes that adults aren't sufficiently competent to make their own personal life decisions, and need to be forced into the correct decisions through threats of violence.
I agree with you, but also do you think it's a good idea to let blind people have driving licences?
Are you insane? I'm not sure you'd pass your own test. Haha
I thoroughly enjoyed this response :D
I know that sounds like a horrible violation of individual freedom, but we already treat children and cognitively impaired elderly people that way. Maybe to graduate from childhood to adult-who-can-sign-contracts, have sexual relationships, vote, etc. everyone has to pass a test, and it's retested periodically in case you regress.
And yet no barriers or means test for Samsung?
if its harmful in some way to some person the “obvious” solution is to means test the entire population for their competency to vote or have sex? i dont own a samsung fridge, but okay sure. sign me up for some weird battery of invasive tests and write me out of life so Samsung can sell hardware and ads.
maybe samsung can even serve me some personalized ads based on my test results.
everyone in big tech is guided by “CAN we do this?” and never “SHOULD we do this?” and theyre totally unaccountable for all of it.
it doesnt matter who it hurts or how it hurts them. thats why they they do whatever they want.
and if something goes wrong, hey i know! lets just turn the screws even tighter on every man woman and child so Samsung can do whatever it wants.
Id tell you to go hell but it sounds like we’re already all in it.
im sorry if thats rude but it actually was the most polite thing i could come up with.
I'm not really talking about this fridge specifically, but generally vulnerable people making self-destructive decisions out of not understanding the world or of being manipulated.
I agree the test itself would probably be too much of a burden but it wouldn't necessarily tighten the screws. We'd have teenagers who pass and can start a business themselves or get married or whatever, along with adults who fail and are protected from fraud, sexual abuse, etc.
The way we currently do it is like apartheid. Assign rights based on some crude metric that's easy to test (race/age) instead of evaluating everyone individually.
> And yet no barriers or means test for Samsung?
Sounds reasonable to test them as well. You shouldn’t be allowed to build home appliances if you’re disabled to the degree you fail this test. Executives, other employees, etc.
Children and the elderly are often not treated as human, and it's not a good thing. We should be looking at restricting corporate freedom a little bit before jumping to creating another explicit legal underclass of people.
Most people are thinking of restricting free human beings from buying fridges with ads. I’m saying that should only happen to the disabled who would be exploited. Rather than turn everyone into a underclass, I propose we explicitly do that only to those who are unable to live without our overwatch.
The net freedom should be higher in this scenario.
Well, that's the most insanely fascist thing I've read today
Why can't I read it too? Replies act like it was something over-the-top great, yet HN isn't showing it to me?
Which brings us back to the topic: why would anyone use HN when it is not good for its single purpose: sharing text between users? It's not even like a fridge with ads, where an ad is an additional annoyance, but fridge functions still work. HN sucks at its very purpose.
Enable 'showdead' in HN preferences. Clicking a direct link to the comment should work too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46171635
Thanks!
edit: a great read indeed
It's a bit trite, but also true -- a significant portion of reddit is totally made up. It's worse than it was a few years ago, but I have no way whatsoever to measure it. Occasionally I bump into youtube videos which are just narrations of reddit posts which tell some interesting or controversial story. They all really sound fabricated. There's no way for me to know with certainty, but I think extreme skepticism is the safer assumption for any large reddit.
Reddit was originally built using fake accounts, who’s to say it ever really stopped.
https://venturebeat.com/ai/reddit-fake-users
who's to say they didn't turn it up to 11 with advent of generative AI
If you spend any time in it, you know it is.
They’ve never forced folks to verify email addresses, but the last 6 months or so you see tons of accounts commenting on very on discussions, writing bland ai-like, making posts that are just riling things up, and/or hiding their post and comment history.
What was once the last bastion of interesting social media is quickly becoming useless.
Everything on the internet is fake. That is as true now as it always was.
For every real post, I can make up a fake one that's more agreeable to the hivemind and therefore will be more upvoted. Since you see a limited amount of posts in a session, you will only see fake posts and the real ones will be hidden forever.
Just because someone suggested a possible scenario could happen and it then did happen isn't all that suspicious to me.
On Reddit? It should... These were historically almost always made up after people looked into it.
To be clear, the picture is likely real. The backstory to it probably not.
The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it. The venn diagram of people sharing such content, having the money to buy such a gigantic smart fridge and suffering from schizophrenia is miniscule
> To be clear, the picture is likely real.
The ads for this TV show are real and do look like that.
Honestly, a trigger for paranoia in someone of the same name as the show's protagonist, or stealth marketing, are equally likely scenarios to me. We don't know.
Its not minuscule at all. Some studies have employment rates for schizophrenics approaching 50%. In any case the rate is not 0%. Apparently when you look at the literature you find conclusions such as:
Very low employment rates are not intrinsic to schizophrenia, but appear to reflect an interplay between the social and economic pressures that patients face, the labour market and psychological and social barriers to working.[0]
Barriers like you believing you can generalize all schizophrenics to be poor/unemployed and unable to earn.
[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/S00127-004-0762-4
> The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it.
Did you read the post? It's somebody talking about what happened to their sister.
Another circle for the Venn diagram is that the schizophrenic sister's name happens to be Carol, the same as the name in the ad shown on the fridge.
Obviously made up.
It’s anti-tech rhetoric so it works well here in HN. That’s the entire purpose of it.
Not to say ads on fridges aren’t stupid. But they are stupid enough by themselves; they don’t have to make up stories about them.
> is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge.
The fridge has been on sale for a few years and schizophrenia can come on very suddenly. People's lives can change in a day because of it. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't reasonably jump to conclusions like that.
Might have wealthy relatives or a trust fund. I agree with you that this is probably made-up anyway.
Of course it might be genuine, but there's also a history of r/LegalAdviceUK getting a number of creative writing exercises. See this post: https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1loyctr/rage...
I used to follow a few personal finance and FIRE subs. Pretty much all of them had surprising number of creative writing exercises too:
"I just inherited $10 million from a dead relative I never knew, what should I do?"
Or:
"I sold my online business for $37 million, is this enough to retire on?"
These daydreamers always create fresh throwaway accounts and usually never come back to answer clarifying questions. If they do, their answers are vague and unhelpful.
Many in the personal finance subs are hooks leading users to one scam or another. Mostly some mild and worthless ebook or course you pay for.
Why use the “creative writing exercise” euphemism that obscures the dishonesty? Call them liars, fakes, frauds, or whatever.
Because it’s not that serious.
Because it's internet + social media. You should assume 60% of it is made up, every time. People are either saying things they know to be untrue, or things they think are true but or not.
When a million doomers post their predictions in response to something, a few are bound to be correct. Doesn't mean it's real, fake, or manifested by the hivemind. Just monkeys with typewriters.
It’s not genuine. The fridge doesn’t show full-screen ads, the original Reddit post and image of the ‘Carol’ ad is staged. At best, this is a parable about the slippery slope our ad-ridden society is sliding down.
https://9to5google.com/samsung-smart-fridge-ads-how-to-turn-...
Update 11/14: Samsung has commented on the image posted to Reddit, noting that the ad format shown on the smart fridge display is not one that would appear over the cover screen. Any ad shown would be limited to the cover screen widget, which displays news, weather, and calendar events. Those slides rotate every 10 seconds or so, and an ad is looped in around every 40 seconds.
It appears that the ad shown in the Reddit photo is of the fridge’s Samsung Internet app. Through that, an ad seems to have shown up organically through a third-party website.
Samsung notes that full-screen ads do not appear as part of these recent software updates, and users shouldn’t expect to see ads that take up the entire display.
‘Shown up organically’ seems like a very generous interpretation to me - it seems far more likely that someone viewed it deliberately for the purposes of staging the photo.
On the one hand, I don't trust reddit.
On the other hand, I don't trust a company that puts ads on their fridges.
Samsung has reputation on the line with millions to lose, unlike fake engagement account on Reddit.
If Samsung cared about their reputation they would have stopped releasing garbage electronics a decade ago and anyone suggesting putting ads on a fridge (and a high end one at that) would have been fired the same day they suggested it.
On one hand I wouldn't cheer for spreading lies, but if this specific post got Samsung to lay down where the ads appear and at which frequency, I'd see the positive side of it. In particular they're that less likely to actually silently move to full ads in the near future even if they planned to, now that they officially commented on it.
On the other hand, this was traditionally the role of art and fiction. Black Mirror was based on the premise of getting people to react to this kind of future, and it looks like it's either not working (anymore?) or we're past the point where hypothetical situations would grab our attention and we can do something about it.
On the third hand, I have no intention to buy a fridge with a screen on it, but if it becomes the mainstream offering will I be forking 10% or 20% to not have th screen, or if those will have significantly better features (better temperature management etc.). I also wished I wasn't looking at ads, but in practice the best educational content right now is sponsored by S**space.
I've seen a photo floating around on Twitter at least: https://x.com/KlonnyPin_Gosch/status/1997179871467094177
No idea if it's not photoshopped though.
The ad is real. I cannot personally vouch for it appearing on smart fridges, but it's not in the least surprising.
I don't understand that account. What is Mickey Mouse doing talking about Al-Aqsa?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow%27s_Pioneers
the most incongruous part of the story to me is the fact that someone like Carol in this post would have such an expensive fridge in the first place - aren't those relatively expensive?
You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?
They won't stop till they can transmit advertisements directly into your brain.
the technology to directly transmit audio without the need for headphones has been around for a while , for a recent implementation one could search up soundlazer
it is interesting to consider that at any point the thoughts in one's skull are not necessarily their own
Seeing how it actually looks like: https://i.redd.it/bhlz9ioh121g1.jpeg
I find it plausible at least.