HTC sends Fantastic Four push notification ad | Hacker News Reader

HTC sends Fantastic Four push notification ad

geekscribe.com.au

44 pointsgeekscribe49 comments

Behavior like this is why my Galaxy S4 was my first and last Samsung phone. They had a pre-installed "Beaming Service" that couldn't be disabled that would randomly show notification ads for unrelated software... at 3am waking me up on a work night. "Oh but Samsung has gotten so much better now"... Yeah, not going down that route again. I don't understand how a company like HTC or Samsung would think something like this was OK and not permanently lose them a paying customer.

Years ago Belkin sold a router that would randomly replace web page requests with ads. I still won't buy so much as a cable from them - and I didn't have one of those routers either; bad publicity lingers. Now I'll add Samsung to the list.

ETA: And HTC. And Microsoft. (But given I'm an Apple guy, them's easy choices at this point. Belkin wasn't quite so easy.)

> randomly show notification ads for unrelated software... at 3am waking me up on a work night.

Sort of unrelated, but this reminded me of a time way back when. Back when AOL Instant Messenger was still widely used. I was awoken by a buzzing sound. I had 5.1 surround sound speakers at the time on my PC and this buzzing was going all over my room.

Being 2-4AM on a school night, I'm tiredly trying to figure out what in the world is making this noise.

Took me a bit, but I powered up my CRT monitor to find a "swat the fly with this flyswatter and win!" advertisement inside of AIM.

It was from that point on that I made a conscious effort to eradicate all advertisements from any applications I use.

I remember that. I think that was the same day I switched to Trillian and never looked back.

I did the same thing for a similar reason. For years now I've refused to use any ad-supported software that I didn't absolutely have to use. I pay money for whatever I use, but unfortunately sometimes the companies I pay still put ads into their product. I was a subscriber to the NYT online for far longer than I should have been, paying $15/mo to still see ads on their site and app. I paid for Hulu Plus for one month and canceled when I realized even when you pay you still see ads.

"We only have good/relevant ads!" I don't care. I might trust you, but I still don't want to see your ads. Let me pay you to get rid of them. If you don't do that, I'll use an ad blocker.

"But that's stealing content!" No it's not. You gave it to me whether I saw the ad or not. In the US, where I live, dollars are legal tender for any debt public or private. If I owe you a debt, either accept cash or block me. If I go to a free concert sponsored by Bud Light, you can't force me to drink your beer.

In most cases, you are not the customer of Samsung or HTC. They sell most of their phones to mobile carriers. It's these mobile carriers who are partially responsible for behavior like this, including crapware, and disabling tethering.

When you buy a developer device, or another device directly from the manufacturer, this kind of thing doesn't happen.

That's why I've got a Nexus 6 now.

This would be true if the ads came from something carrier-installed, but this ad was pushed by HTC Sense. This is HTC's fault, not the carriers.

I think the majority of users have no idea that they can avoid those issues by switching phones. Also, it is probably rare enough that it doesn't come up at the end of their 2-year contract (or 5 years of having the same phone, if you're my parents).

The Galaxy S3 had an unremovable Pizza Hut bookmark in the UK. Seriously.

This is why we need to have the ability and legal right to root and modify our hardware. My rooted Galaxy tablet has more software disabled then running on it. It's fantastic hardware and even some of Samsung UI customizations aren't terrible but the amount of useless software installed is incredible.

I bought an S4 from a friend after I broke my nexus. I ended up ditching it within a month because it was loaded with so much crap. I also will never buy a samsung phone again because of this.

>I don't understand how a company like HTC or Samsung would think something like this was OK and not permanently lose them a paying customer.

There's an old joke about two people in the forest who encounter a bear. One of them starts changing his hiking boots for running shoes, and the other asks "What are you doing? Even with those shoes, you'll never outrun a bear!" to which the first responds "I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you."

Likewise, HTC doesn't have to avoid permanently losing any customers, they just have to avoid losing more in customer sales than they make in advertisements.

My Samsung Smart TV started doing this recently. A small banner ad scrolls across the top of it telling me about some new app that I should download (presumably on the TV's app store?).

It seems to me that once a product (TVs, smart phones, tablets, etc) becomes a commodity, the business model is to immediately stop focusing on creating well-built products that sell themselves, and start focusing on your new product -- the user.

Samsung's TV popups drove me crazy. I ended up just completely disconnecting it from the internet. I would like to use a couple of the built in apps but it just isn't worth it.

Same thing here. I was seeing a pop-up for a service that was going to be discontinued. Thanks Samsung, I really needed to know that.

I was also seeing "smart ads" when it detected some out-of-band signal for ads I was seeing in Hulu. It would pop up some UI on top of the display that would let you "learn more". Thanks again Samsung for enriching my experience.

In all of my dislike of smart TVs, I honesty hadn't even considered that they could just crap ads directly into your line-of-sight regardless of what else you're currently doing.

I connected the Smart TV only once to get the first update, otherwise even the hub menu was locked-down (which is required to access the USB port). Now, it is just a dumb TV monitor. I have my tablet around me anyways.

maybe you can use Kodi

Apparently, from their perspective, it's OK to cross that line:

* It's not your notification area; it's theirs -- they control what shows up on it.

* It's not your operating system; it's theirs -- they control what it does.

* It's your not phone; it's theirs -- they control what you can do with it.

It could get worse. I imagine it's only a matter of time before we start getting ads inserted within our personal messages (e.g., "click here to read the rest of your mom's email"), or asked to click through ads to change phone settings like display brightness, or even forced to see ads before we can use the phone to make non-emergency phone calls. Their imagination is the limit!

Edits: added e.g. in parenthesis to clarify what I meant.

> I imagine it's only a matter of time before we start getting ads inserted within our personal emails

I remember when just about every free e-mail provider did this in the 90s.

I still see this today

Sent from my iPhone!

That's not just an advertisement.

I always make sure to have an email signature on my phone that lets people know I'm on a phone. Specifically it says "Sent from my phone, excuse any brevity or typos."

Sending a response from your phone should carry different expectations, so I consider "Sent from my iPhone" to be entirely forgivable.

This could make sense if they would give phone away for free, but if one pays for it, one expects the phone to be fully his/hers.

Apple isn't immune to this either! Every once in a while, U2 starts playing on my phone inadvertently. I didn't ask for that music, thanks.

How is this behavior acceptable? Didn't Tim Cook tell us that Apple was the one tech company that won't sell-out its users?

Do you have other things in your iTunes library? I've noticed that sometimes when connecting/disconnecting to bluetooth speakers my iPhone will play the first thing in my library with out asking me. I'm guessing when they sent out that free U2 album that's the only thing in your library and the bluetooth bug is making it play randomly.

Dropping a random album into your library is slightly more forgivable than an interrupting notification at 3am.

Not saying it's excusable, but loading the U2 album on everyone's library is, as far as I know, the only thing along these lines Apple has ever done. With Android, it's par for the course.

Look, the U2 album thing was a stupid move, IMO. But it seems like a totally different class of offensive; 'We sent you an unsolicited free album!' versus 'We're sending you unsolicited advertisements!'.

And you can of course delete that free album if you don't want it. That'll solve your inadvertent playing problem.

It was originally undeleteable (now that has been fixed).

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/15/apple-u2-a...

OS X Mavericks will also constantly nag you with notification to upgrade to broken Yosemite.

Yosemite doesn't seem broken. That aside, you are being deliberately disingenuous by comparing a software update notification to unsolicited advertising.

You can remove that album.

https://itunes.com/soi-remove

Thanks for the link! That worked perfectly.

Google needs to do something about the general load of crap that comes on most Android phones. I just switched from a Nexus 4 to a Galaxy S5, and even considering the massive jump in hardware specs I am consistently less satisfied with my phone-using experience. I don't want to have to install a custom ROM and lose stability and camera performance just to avoid being bombarded with Samsung and AT&T crap every 10 minutes.

Google doesn't need to do anything about it; buyers need to factor it in when they buy phones. Some people don't care, other people care a lot, and it's possible some people even like TouchWiz(tm) and its ilk.

But yeah, that's why carrier-unlocked Motorolas and Nexuses are pretty much the only phones I'd consider at this point.

...and some people have no clue whatsoever and will form an indelible impression of what Android is like based on the experience they have with whatever phone the store salesman recommended.

That's more like "most."

It's the same reason many people come to hate Windows and switch to the "pure, friendly, easy" OSX. They buy whatever laptop was recommended to them at Best Buy and have to deal with all of that preinstalled malware that makes the machine a piece of junk. Very few consumers ever get to work with "plain" Windows without all the junk the OEMs put on it.

> Google doesn't need to do anything about it

They don't, but I'd argue if they want to have any hope of competing with iOS in the high end market they absolutely need to. So many people have super negative impressions of Android that are based solely on e.g. TouchWiz.

I hate every aspect of this. I don't even own an HTC phone and I feel rage.

What consistently gets me about this sort of thing is the corporate-speak that the apologies are inevitably wrapped up in – like HTC is doing users an awesome service by piping adverts directly to their phone. I don't get how someone could ever consider this a feature that a user could possibly want.

https://m.reddit.com/r/htc/comments/2p3bso/heads_up_to_anyon...

Previous bad behaviour from HTC (pushed an update to their app that automatically uploaded photos somewhere)

My phone provider (Fido, Canada) used to call me weekly to try and sell me random crap. Every single time, I would complain that I find being cold-called by a service I already pay for extremely rude. "But Sir, we're trying to offer you the best service possible, in no way is this rude". It took the threat of legal action to get them to stop...

Shaw TV inserts ads taking up about a third of the screen real estate when browsing channels. When asked, I was told this was for my benefit and there was no way to disable it. Again, shoving ads in your face even though you're already a paying customer. I'm cancelling my TV subscription again (I pretty much never use it anyway).

When going to the movies, all the major movie theatres will practically coerce people into turning up early for the official showtime ("get a good seat while you can!"), then proceed to show nearly 30 minutes of advertising (after having paid $15 for my seat...). I now go to independent movie theatres whenever I can.

I recently bought a wireless HP printer for which the software is absymally bad. After installing it (twice), I proceeded to disable all the "cloud" options (this has to be done on both the PC AND the printer itself...). Throughout the installation, it keeps marking options as "recommended", such as having to register your personal details on their website. Any non-savvy user would easily fall for this. I missed one option (I don't even recall whether it was actually available) and ended up with a bunch of icons on my desktop for offers, as well as a huge icon in the taskbar displaying popups every so often for "special offers". I complained to HP, haven't heard anything yet (and doubt I ever will).

Unfortunately, I have many more examples such as these... But to address the point made by the author:

> Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

It is already happening, and in full force. How this sort of behavior is even legally tolerated is beyond me.

HTC's approach to adding these is IMO backwards. They should have implemented opt-out before rolling these things out:

> We will be implementing a way for you to opt out of receiving these promotions, but we hope that displaying native and limited promotions in this way will help you discover new and useful apps and/or products and services.

http://www.droid-life.com/2015/06/16/htc-device-owners-prepa...

You can at least switch to another launcher to disable blinkfeed but I'm guessing its out of the frying pan into the oven with many of these:

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-get-rid-of-blinkfeed-on-yo...

> This ad was pushed to my phone despite my use of a custom launcher.

From the first message in the reddit thread

Any word if this is Sense-driven and if it will be avoided if you use an alternative launcher? My instinct says yes, since it's supposed to be Sense that HTC was rolling out ads to, although the fact that it showed up in the Notification bar makes me wonder if it bypasses the launcher altogether.

With Android phones turning into commodity hardware, is there any other road? Have PC makers figured out how to make money without crapware?

I did not get this on my HTC One M7. Still one of the best phones ever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com